


Catch the Mist

by merelypassingtime



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Case Fic, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, M/M, Pining, Post-Season/Series 03, Post-Season/Series 03 Fix-It, Puzzles, Serial Killers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-07-23 13:43:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7465629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merelypassingtime/pseuds/merelypassingtime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock pursues a serial killer who might just be pursuing him in return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a story about two boys who fall in love, sort of. I mean by most societal yardsticks this is actually story about two men falling in love but I say boys because emotionally they both are. Or at least of of them is emotionally a boy. The other is both a boy and a man but they both fall in love with the other boy. I guess it would be most accurate to say this is the story of a boy, a man, and the man-child they both love. The important thing is that it starts with a prologue…

Prologue 

His ears were still ringing from the gun shots, his wrists ached from the recoil of the ancient revolver. The adrenaline coursed through his system making him jittery but he did his best to walk evenly and slowly. He was wearing cheap headphones as a visible reason why he would be have missed the commotion and sirens so he could still walk away from the scene rather then going to gawp at it like most in the neighborhood. He had agonized long over what would be least suspicious. Certainly the thought of standing around the police tape appealed. The intense pull to go back and watch the police tag, catalog, and photograph everything like it was a great work of art, his art, was reason enough to stay away. So he walked towards home, not quickly but deliberately, headphones in but silent.

Instead he replayed in his head the gun shots, the screams, the look of horror on a drunken face... It had been amazing. Amazing, exhilarating, but not perfect by any means. Objectively, he admitted it had gone rather spectacularly wrong.

He had been planning, scouting, and preparing for this night for almost a year. Using the anticipation to focus and keep the rage and violence in check during the rest of him's last year of residence. It had all been nearly ruined by the revolver misfiring.

The gun had been a new twist after using a knife on the last victim had itself gone pear-shaped. That woman had nearly over-powered him in a display of drunken strength and the resultant blood stains had cost him an entire set of nice clothes. A loss which had not gone unnoticed. After that he had reasoned that a longer ranged weapon would be better at limiting collateral damage, no blood stained clothes, no unexplainable bruises, more control all around.

So when a patient had mentioned his antique gun collection he had taken an exciting evening to borrow the man's keys and burgled his house for a World War II era service revolver. He had even practiced with it out in the country once and had felt relatively good about his ability to hit a man at point blank range. He had not been prepared for the gun to unexpectedly kick to the left making the planned chest shot into an arm wound. He had also been unprepared for how loud the shot would be reverberating off the alley walls. He could admit that he panicked a little and it had taken several more shots to get one he knew would be quickly fatal. And, okay, that last shot to the man's genitals had been rather unnecessary but oh-so satisfying.

Yeah, it had been sloppy. Even now, more then an hour later and miles from the scene when it seemed that he was away scot-free he knew that he was going to need to take steps to clean up his mess and make the next time run smoother, more perfect.

The latex gloves he would just leave in his trouser pocket, they would get thrown away on laundry day with no questions asked. The gun was more problematic. After its unreliably he certainly would not want to keep it and use it again as had been his plan, but getting rid of it tonight seemed like pushing his luck. However, hiding it around the flat had always included a risk of it being found which would be a disaster. Plus nights out like this were hard to arrange and the more he took the more likely they were to be noticed. No, he would get rid of the gun tonight.

After much thought and not a bit more walking he ended up throwing it into the large pond several blocks from his flat. The Thames would have been better and more traditional, but he would have had to go quite out of his way for it and spent who knows how long looking for a piece of unlit bank to throw it off of. Then he would have to walk home too. So the pond it was.

Still, he would need a better gun for the next time, a lot more practice firing it, and a good reason for it to be around the flat. He could also use a better knowledge of hand to hand combat and enough excitement and violence to take the edge off the hunger.

The next week he joined the army. John could never exactly explain why. Hamish always knew for sure.

 

Chapter One

Sherlock got off the train from a disappointed case in Swindon. Really, if the police constable was going to commit murder then call in the world's only consulting detective she could have at least not worn the same shoes to pick him up from the train station. The sheer stupidity of some people was enough to give him a headache.  
  
Luckily there had been enough time before the train back to buy and smoke several of a pack of cigarettes. The John in his mind palace strongly disproved of this but he was easy enough to ignore. Real John was out in the suburbs being married and raising a child, and working a 'steady' job. Boring. Tedious. Heartbreaking- No. He did not think about that.  
  
He was just getting out of the train station back in London when his phone started ringing, effectively stopping him from lighting up another cigarette after the trip. Lestrade.  
  
“Where are you? I need you at a crime scene right now. How fast can you be to Fleet St.?”  
  
“What is the rush Lestrade? Worried the body is going to become more dead?”  
  
“Sherlock, it is the Back-alley Butcher.”  
  
“Yes! Amazing! Text me the details, I'll be there in 20 minutes.” Sherlock was already striding towards the street.  
  
As soon as he was seated and the cab was on its way Sherlock pulled his phone back out.  
  
**John, serial killer! Meet me at Fleet St -SH**  
  
**I have 45 minutes left of work, be there in an hour -JW**  
  
**Really? Old ladies with colds and work excuses are more important then stopping a murderer? Rethink your priorities. -SH**  
  
**Healing mankind and paying my bills versus stroking your ego and having my intelligence insulted. I think my priorities are just right. -JW**  
  
Sherlock was unsure how to respond to that. It had been like this since his return from the dead. Sometimes John was still his friend, warm, supportive and complementary. Other times there was an edge to it. The jokes had a bite, the anger was closer to the surface. Well, the anger and something else he couldn't name. It was... different. Not bad, not bad at all but definitely different. Intriguing. Fascinating even.  
  
He was saved from his thoughts by both his arrival at his destination and by a terse text from John.  
  
**One hour, Sherlock. Don't go haring off without me. -JW**  
  
He carefully exited John's wing in his mind palace, feeling his face go blank as he took out money for the cabbie.  
  
Lestrade was waiting for him at the entrance to a particularly grimy alley.  
  
“Finally you're here. Stevenson has taken all his initial photographs and is not very pleased to be holding the scene for,” here Lestrade employed air quotes and repeated with clear relish, “'that smarmy, arrogant arsehole.'”  
  
“Really, is there such a shortage of qualified forensic technicians that you have to keep hiring these incompetent, myopic-”  
  
“Hey now,” The DI interrupted. “We wouldn't have so much trouble finding good ones if you would stop scaring them off!”  
  
“That was one time. And how was I to know that would be so sensitive about his cross dressing. You know statistically one out of every five British males enjoys cross dressing.”  
  
“Well would you want...” Greg trailed off. He really did not want to know anything about Sherlock in woman's clothing. “Ugh. It was probably for a case.” he muttered.  
  
Sherlock just smirked knowingly.  
  
“Anyway, what about Anderson? You certainly drove him off the force too.”  
  
“Anderson was hardly competent. He is better suited to the occupation of semi-full-time stalking. Besides...”  
  
But by that time they had reached the middle of the alley where a group clustered around the body lying prone next to the end of one skip. Sherlock immediately crouched next to the body pulling on a pair of gloves from one of his pockets, observations already spooling out before his eyes.  
  
Late 30s, heavy drinker, recently dyed hair, inexpert self manicure: looking for company: likely picked up by killer at bar. Killer will be mid 30s to late 40s and reasonably attractive.  
  
Single gun shot to the head, shot from the front, center of the forehead from approximately two meters: killer is a good shot and has steady nerves: actual sociopath?  
  
“Lestrade, weren't the other alleged victims shot in the chest?”  
  
“Yea, but we are pretty sure this is the same guy. Same sort of back alley, same caliber gun.”  
  
“9mm, right.” it wasn't really a question.  
  
“Yea”  
  
“Mmm.” Sherlock grunted noncommittally .  
  
Her neck had been slit post-postmortem, likely to drain her blood more rapidly and her hideous blouse was cut up the front, exposing the gaping y-incision to her torso. The cuts were clean and sure, not the work of an amateur. The pictures of the other victims had indicated this, but it was good to confirm it in person. Someone with a medical or mortuary background then.  
  
“No sign of the organs removed?” Sherlock asked.  
  
“Not yet. We haven't moved the body at all yet, so we aren't sure he even removed any this time.” Lestrade answered.  
  
“Of course he did.”  
  
“He didn't last time.”  
  
Sherlock didn't have an answer for that. In a lot of way the previous victim had been odd. If the ballistics hadn't matched the gun he would have thought that murder a copycat.  
  
“Besides,” Lestrade pressed his point. “The other victims all had their organs left on the scene.”  
  
“So, he is evolving. Changing his ritual. Why?” But there was no one there to answer. Sherlock resisted the impulse to check his phone. He knew it would be at least 20 minutes until John arrived and he hated starting his deductions like this without his blogger present. He sighed and turned his attention back to the corpse.  
  
That was interesting. The bloodstains on the clothes were all wrong. If she had been shot and dissected on the ground where her body was positioned now her shirt would be absolutely soaked as would the ground. Even if the body had just been moved from another flat piece of ground there should have been more blood soaking her shirt.  
  
He looked around the alley, and, yes, there was a large drainage grate to the far back corner. He paced over to it and sure enough there was a mass of brownish blonde hairs stuck there and the maroon marks of dried blood. Sherlock announced, “Victim was shot in this corner then moved to her current place one to two hours after death.”  
  
Stevenson made an indignant squawk from the group now around the mouth of the alley and a set of footstep started towards him.  
  
“Really Stevenson, why do you bother coming at all if you aren't going to even perform the most basic inspections of the scene?”  
  
“Maybe he was too busy picking out a handbag to match his eyes.” said a quiet tenor voice from right behind him. John: here a whole twenty minutes sooner then promised. He must have blown off his last two patients to get here. Sherlock instantly felt lighter. He almost as instantly tried to repress the undignified snort as John's comment processed.  
  
“Really John, you shouldn't make fun. You know one in five British men-”  
  
“Yes I believe we have all been made aware of that. If we could focus a bit on what is going on here...”  
  
“Ah- of course. Why would the killer move the body? I mean this is clearly the best spot for the shooting itself to take place. It is secluded, no direct line of sight from the street, drainage. It is just so... tidy, so clever.”  
  
A look flashed across John's face, pulling Sherlock's focus back from the middle distance to the man in front of him. Was it pleasure? Pride? It was gone too fast to be sure. Sherlock filed the moment away to examine later and this time addressed the question directly to John. “Why would the killer move the body from this nice remote corner and over near the skip?”  
  
“Maybe he wanted it to be found more quickly?” John offered.  
  
“Why that side of the skip then? If she had been placed on the street side she would have been found this morning by a passerby rather instead of this afternoon by the rubbish collectors.  
  
“Oi, how'd you know she was found by the rubbish collectors?” Lestrade demanded.  
  
Sherlock barely spared him a 'I would try to explain but thinking down to your level physically damages my brain' look before turning back to John. “So, was it the time of discovery that was important, did he want to draw attention toward something near the skip, or perhaps did he want to draw attention away from this corner?”  
  
“Serial killer,” John reminded. “It doesn't necessarily have to make sense.”  
  
“That is where you are wrong. Serial killers often make the most sense once you understand their logic. No sloppy passion or greed, just reason and ritual. Admittedly the reason is often warped and the ritual often bloody but, when seen from the killer's perspective, it is always rational.”  
  
Behind them Lestrade huffed in exasperation. Sherlock ignored him. There was something off about this corner. He was sure of it. It wasn't the appearance of the place, too dark to see much of anything back here anyway so he closed his eyes and inhaled. The expected dampness was there as well as a strong hint of mold and the coppery tang of blood. But there was also something sweet, something familiar. He took another deep breath and worked on localizing the scent. He ended up facing the farthest wall, where the victim's head would have been while she was draining out his mind supplied. Out loud he demanded, “I require a floodlight right now and you will need an ultraviolet light as soon as it is sufficiently dark out.”  
  
“Why...” Lestrade started but cut himself off with a sigh. “I'll just go and grab one, shall I?” he finished with resignation, leaving the detective and the doctor crouched together near the grate.  
  
“So, what are we going to find with the light?” John asked.  
  
“There is something in this corner, something the killer wanted us to find but only if we were clever enough. Don't you smell that?”  
  
“All I smell is Eau de Filthy Alley and cigarette smoke. Really, Sherlock, I thought you had quit.”  
  
Sherlock felt a bit guilty for a second but pushed it aside as unimportant. “Well, what you fail to observe is the faint but important under note of honey.”  
  
“Honey?” John asked, but by that time Lestrade was back with a tall light poles.  
  
“Good. Throw as much light as you can on this wall.” Sherlock said, stepping closer and snapping open his pocket magnifying glass.  
  
Sure enough, almost invisible against the grey concrete were equally grey numbers spiraling out from a point at about hip level and ending with the spiral opening upwards.  
  
“Oh- that is going to be extremely difficult to photograph.” Sherlock sounded slightly gleeful. “But the ultraviolet should help. Honey fluoresces after all depending on the type and quality. Indeed, that will be a good first step in identifying the honey's source.”  
  
“Well, that and the colour, right?” Lestrade asked. “I mean, I haven't ever seen grey honey before.”  
  
This time Sherlock hoped the look he sent Lestrade said 'It is clear that in your case billions of years of selective evolution were a couple of million years too few.' He sighed and said aloud “Obviously there is ash mixed in with the honey.” He leaned in closer to the last number in the sequence with his lens. “Likely cigarette ash, given the coarseness.”  
  
“And trust him, he knows ash.” John added with a fond smile.  
  
Sherlock flicked a smile back, but it was a puzzled one. John had always said that he didn't remember any of his stag night. Maybe some of it was till there after all. For a second the memory of a hand on his thigh and a shared look interrupted threatened to derail his thoughts. He quickly tamped the memory back down.  
  
“Written right handed by a person approximately 5'9” or 5'8” using a bakery piping bag and a round tip, a #6 in size. Numbers are even and regular, the killer has a steady hand as we know already from the incisions on the bodies. He also is practiced with a piping bag.  
  
John asked wryly “So our butcher is also a baker? Does he make candlesticks as well?”  
  
Lestrade snorted, Sherlock just looked blank. He thought about asking what baking had to do with candles but decided his dignity was better served by ignoring the second question. Instead he replied “No, not a professional baker. He practiced for this, look how sure and perfect the spiral is. Absolutely proportionally perfect in fact...” He paused as the idea struck him, then quickly glanced through the numbers to check. “Oh. OH! So clever! This case just got upgraded from a seven to a nine!”  
  
“What is so clever, Sherlock?” asked Lestrade.  
  
“The numbers are a substitution code, the spiral is a hint to break it, don't you see? No. of course you don't see. Just shut up for a moment.” He carefully opened the Back-alley Butcher file in his mind palace to a blank page and spent almost a whole minute committing the series of numbers to it for later decoding.  
  
He then carefully surveyed the corner in the harsh light but saw nothing else. There was little else he could conclude about either the honey or the ash. Certainly nothing he could not better discover with a sample and the lab at St. Bart's later anyway. He briefly considered trying to obtain a sample of the honey for analysis now but dismissed the idea. It really would be difficult enough to photograph without him smearing a number. No, this corner had given up all its secrets.  
  
Sherlock asked,“When can we expect the autopsy to be preformed?”  
  
“Probably tonight.” Lestrade replied.  
  
“St. Bart's?”  
  
“God no. This is way too high profile for St. Bart's. She'll be going to University College.”  
  
Sherlock scowled. Molly he at least had a chance of bullying into letting him watch the autopsy. University College wouldn't even let him through the door any more. To be fair though, the fire had not been entirely his fault last time.  
  
Lestrade raised his hands in placation “Look, I'll get you a copy of the report as soon as it crosses my desk, yeah?”  
  
“Fine, but I want a list of all the organs he removed soonest. Text me”  
  
Sherlock began to sweep grandly out of the alley but paused again at the body admiring the neat lines of the y-incision contrasting with the utter mess of the head wound. Why a head shot this time he wondered again.  
  
“Maybe something about this victim was personal.” John offered. Sherlock wondered if he had been speaking out loud or if John had gotten better at deducing him. “Shooting someone in the head seems... more angry.”  
  
“Perhaps.” he replied. But somehow he doubted it somehow. He turned from the body and finished making his way back out to the main street, ignoring the glares and muttering from the waiting officers and forensic people. As always John stayed by his side, solid and reassuring.  
  
When they reached the kerb Sherlock turned to his companion. “Well, I am back to Baker St to go over the other cases. Would you want to grab some take-away and look through them with me?”  
  
John looked several emotions all at once, as only John could do. Primarily he seemed regretful and awkward. “Ah, no. Sorry Sherlock,” he said. “I have to get home to help Mary get Olivia ready for bed. Tomorrow, maybe? By then I can look at the autopsy report and we'll have samples for the lab, right?”  
  
“Of course, er...” Sherlock thought he should probably ask how the baby and Mary were doing, that is what people did right? But he knew they were okay, John would never have come out if there were any problems. He could tell by the reduction in the bags under John's eyes that the baby was still waking up once or twice a night, better than she had been doing when they first got her home. The not quite crisp lines ironed into his pants said Mary was still on maternity leave and therefore doing all the laundry. He took in a half a hundred other little clues that the Watson home was getting just fine before realizing he had trailed off in the middle of saying something.  
  
John now just looked amused. “Yeah, everything is going okay at home, thanks for thinking about asking.”  
  
Sherlock decided John was getting entirely too good at reading him. He was going to have to be more careful. “Well, good.” he said. “I will see you tomorrow then.”  
  
“It'll be in the evening, I do have work again. I'll stop and get Indian at that place you like and then make you eat it, just like old times.”  
  
“Tomorrow evening then, good night John.”  
  
“'night Sherlock.” John responded, already turning to walk towards the nearest tube station.  
  
Sherlock quickly hailed a cab and gave the address for Baker St.  
  
Even after all this time it still felt wrong going back to a flat without John in it. It left him off-kilter even when such a glorious puzzle to otherwise occupy his mind. He tried to shake the feeling off, and started to work on the cipher the killer had left for him. It must have been for him specifically, left in honey and ashes. How had no one else made the connection to the articles on his blog? Not even John, who had been halfway there with his ash joke. Was that what had changed? Did he have another 'fan'?  
  
Really, a nearly invisible code left for him at a crime scene was rather... elegant. It certainly showed more finesse than a bomb across the street and a phone in an envelop. He was intrigued.  
  
The cab pulled up to Baker St while he was still deep in thought. He paid the fare, and made his way through the outer door and halfway up the stairs before he realized that something was not right. The door to the flat was standing open, very much not as he had left it that morning.  
  
His first thought was Mycroft, but the door knocker had been properly crooked outside. He considered. He could call for backup to search the flat, but John would still be on his way home to his family and might be annoyed to be called back out. Anyone else would use this as an excuse for a well meaning but pointless drug search, and he didn't want to have to fix his sock index yet again. Still, in the end it was more his curiosity and impatience that propelled him into the flat on his own.  
  
He found nothing. Nobody laying in wait to attack, no bodies littering the floor, no large ominous looking packages. Embarrassingly it wasn't until his third time through the kitchen that he noticed the heart drawn on the refrigerator. Drawn in honey and ash with a piping bag and a #6 sized round tip. He stared for just a moment before opening the refrigerator door. There on the center shelf were several plastic containers neatly labeled 'Spleen,' 'Kidneys,' and the like. Foremost was a container labeled 'Heart,' on top of which was a printed piece of paper. It read:  
  
_My heart is for you,_  
_My liver is too._  
_That might seem a little bit weird_  
_But often times brilliance is feared._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The cipher on the wall, if anyone is interested in trying their hand at it:  
> 21/2584/2/0/2 3/21/0 21/0/39  
> 987/13/1 46368/2589/13 8/3/1/0 4181/2584/0/55/2  
> 2/2584 8/0/21/0 1/2 2/2584/55/0/2584/5/0 34/0/3/34  
> 28657/13/2/1 610/2584/21 46368/2584/13 8/2584/377/55/0/2  
> I didn't actually give Sherlock any letter breaks to work with, but then he is a genius...


	2. Chapter Two

What he should have done immediately was call Lestrade and got a whole team of forensic halfwits to crawl all over the flat, dusting for fingerprints they wouldn't find and again imperiling the sock index. He should have called Mycroft and asked if the myriad of CCTV cameras he had pointed at 221 Baker St had picked up anyone unusual entering or leaving the building.

What Sherlock did do was take out the container marked liver. More out of curiosity then expectation he dusted the surface for fingerprints but found rather the sort of smudges left by someone handling it with latex gloves. The dust did highlight the small scratches on the bottom, made no doubt when it was resting on the ground in the alley-way. He planned from the outset to take them for me, Sherlock thought. Then he thought the rush of excitement that gave him was probably a bit not good. Still, he did not think again about calling Lestrade. After all, it would be foolish to waste a perfectly good set of organs, and it had been increasingly difficult to wheedle specimens out of Molly since he had come back. Especially he noticed since her engagement ended. 

So he took the liver out of its tub. As he had suspected, the liver had been removed flawlessly and was in good shape for a heavy drinker in her thirties. He must have had a cooler and ice waiting on the scene as well to persevere it for me, Sherlock thought with an unaccustomed feeling, warmth maybe, or gratitude? He wasn't sure, and was even less sure he wanted to analyze exactly what he was feeling. He quickly divided the liver in to several pieces and set them in salt water of differing levels of acidity to occupy his mind more productively.

He then debated whether to start working on decoding the cipher or to study the sample of honey and ashes his killer had so helpfully left him. In the end, the cipher was just too tempting, but he did compromise by preparing several slides with the honey mixture.

The cipher turned out to be both easier and more challenging than expected. The code itself was simple enough but the lack of delineation between the characters made for a great deal of trial and error. In the end it took him almost an hour to fully crack it.

_Roses are red_  
_But you hate poems_  
_So here is someone dead_  
_Just for you Holmes_

Sherlock added 'really atrocious at poetry' to the things he knew about his killer. He really didn't expect it to help much but to a great mind nothing is little.

Coming out of his fugue Sherlock checked his phone. Just a bit before 1am and he had two text messages. The first from John at 8:43pm, a picture of a sleeping Olivia, still impossibly small at two months old. She had one arm draped over the as anatomically accurate as possible stuffed honey bee Sherlock had found online and that they all pretended had actually been a gift from Mrs. Hudson. He saved the picture to a file heading named 'Spores, molds, and fungus.' He had bent enough to set the background of his phone to his favorite picture, one of a delighted looking John holding a newborn Olivia who was herself giving the camera John's 'Why is there a head in the refrigerator?' look. Even Mycroft had not been foolish enough to tease him about his sentiment for that yet.

The second text was from Lestrade and had come in only twenty minutes before. It was the list of all the organs taken that he had requested but no longer needed. He glanced through it and yes, all of them had ended up in his possession.

**Is the full autopsy available yet? -SH**

**No, it is the middle of the bloody night. I had to call in a favor just to get this list for you. Don't even try bothering me for the full report before 10 this morning unless you want to end up reading a report on your own autopsy instead.**

**That is impossible, how could I read my own autopsy, I would be dead. -SH**

**I DON'T CARE, I AM TRYING TO SLEEP.**

Sherlock decided it best to let sleeping DIs lie. Luckily he had several other lines of inquiry to pursue.

 

When John showed up to the flat at 6:30 the next evening with curry Sherlock was just finishing up his wall of murder over the couch.

“Oh, a wall. Not everyone gets a wall.” John commented as he began arranging the paper cartons of take away on the desk.

“It is not that uncommon, I just finished taking down the one tracing Moriarty's impostor.”

“You mean Faux-iarty?”

“John, your blog titles are abysmal.”

“Secretly you love them. And this is the first one I have seen dedicated to a single murderer and not to a large scale attack on London or Moriarty.” John paused a moment in thought, “Actually, Moriarty didn't even get a mural, did he?”

“Well, Moriarty had cameras in the flat. I couldn't exactly tip my hand by writing anything down for him, could I?”

“He did? What parts of the flat?!”

“That is hardly relevant anymore is it?” Sherlock asked. John just glared back. “Besides,” he continued, “Four dead bodies, John, both male and female, missing organs, no DNA evidence, and now a secret code! It is...”

“Christmas. I know, I know. Why don't you sit down for a second, have a few bites of this lovely tikka masala, and walk me though it from the beginning.”

From long experience Sherlock knew better than to flatly refuse the food, though he thought about it. That would just lead to a sulky John, and sulky John was a poor audience. He compromised by taking a bite out of the offered carton, then jumping back up and pointing at one of the pictures on the wall. 

“2 June 2012, first victim, male, 37, unemployed alcoholic, last seen leaving a bar in Camden Town alone.”

“Name?” John asked

“Does it really matter?”

“I suppose not.”

John didn't seem as upset as he once had been at his apparent disconnection from the victim, so Sherlock forged on. “He was found two blocks away from the bar in a courtyard next to an addiction consulting center.”

“Funny.” John interjected.

“Not a joke anyone got at the time I am afraid. This was still just a single death and the importance of the alcoholism was not recognized. Besides, the staging of the body was rather... distracting.” Sherlock pointed to a picture he had liberated from the police files Lestrade had left conveniently unguarded on his desk. It showed the body lying face up, naked, and spread eagle on the broken pavement. A bullet wound marred the left side of the torso, but not nearly as much as the large gash down the middle of the chest. A large red pentagram was painted underneath the body with bloody masses of removed organ at the five star points.

“Yeah, that is a bit... dramatic.” John said, still calmly eating his curry. “Satanists or a cult they presumed?”

“Actually, no. Lestrade was the DI in charge, and he dismissed the cult angle pretty quickly.” Sherlock allowed himself to sound grudgingly impressed. “Admittedly, he did waste a lot of time looking for someone in the victim's life with motive to kill him. When that came up dry he focused on looking for, of all things, a group of thrill seeking teenagers. Like life is a badly written detective show.” 

“So,” Sherlock continued. “That clearly did not go anywhere and the case went cold. That is until the next year, 4 June 2013 when the second victim was found. This one, a female, 43, was found in Whitechapel. Again, an alcoholic, last seen leaving her place of employment the day before.” He pointed to another photograph, this one of a women on her back, gunshot wound to the chest apparent, throat deeply cut, with what looked like a grey rope around her neck.

“Are those her intestines around her neck?” John asked, somewhere between interested and repelled.

“Yup.” Sherlock gave the “p” extra emphasis. “Indeed, if you hadn't filled your brain with so much unnecessary data, you would clearly see the parallels between this body and the body of Catherine Eddowes, widely accepted to be Jack the Ripper's fourth victim. Many of the same organs had been disturbed, though the cuts were more even, and the mutilations to the face where notably lacking.”

“I remember reading about that. That is when the press started calling him the Back-alley Butcher, right? And he sent that bit of kidney to the Daily Mail?”

“Yes, though it did not make it through their security screening. Like the supposed Eddowes kidney it was soaked in wine, a Chianti which for some pop culture reason is significant.”

John started to say something but Sherlock kept talking over him. “If you are going to say something about fava beans, don't. That is what Lestrade and Donovan say every time it comes up. Tiresome.” John closed his mouth with the sad look of someone beaten to the punchline.

“Around that same time,” Sherlock continued, “Ballistics matched the bullet found to that in the first victim.”

“What kind of gun is the killer using?”

“SIG Sauer, P226”

“Nice gun, think our guy is military or ex-military?”

“Not enough data. Killer could be police or just well practiced. As you say, it is a well liked gun and not overly rare. London gun clubs and shooting ranges were investigated but to little effect. By that time the police were getting rather desperate. There was something of a media frenzy, full of press conferences and loud calls for action and progress but the authorities had very little in the way of solid evidence.”

“Plus,” John added, “They didn't have the world's only consulting detective to help them.”

“True, we'll never know what clues were missed at those first two scenes as the cipher was missed at yesterday's. For all we know the killer could have left his name and address next to the first body and the police just failed to notice it. Anderson was still working forensics at the time after all.” Sherlock paused in his diatribe, arrested by a new thought. “But no, he wouldn't have left a message at those deaths. The challenge in them was setting up elaborate and puzzling set pieces and leaving no evidence behind. His motive seems to have changed drastically after the second victim.”

This is why he needed John, it was always him and his off hand remarks and not quite idiotic questions that would send his mind down new paths. It was also him sitting there patiently, as steadying as an anchor, while Sherlock chased his thoughts down. For several minutes a comfortable silence fell while Sherlock puzzled at what could have changed between the second and third murder and John ate and looked over the new articles scattered on the desk that had not made it to the murder wall.

As Sherlock's body language began to move from thoughtful to frustrated, John broke the quiet. He tapped one of the printouts saying “It is funny, there is so much here about the first two deaths, especially the second one with all the headlines and panic about the new serial killer stalking the streets.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes and interjected, “Wrong. You have to have three or more bodies to be counted a serial killer. Two, however grandly staged, just makes you a murder enthusiast.”

“Well, isn't that the thing. All this about the first victims, but almost nothing about the third when he became officially serial.”

“I am not surprised, the third victim was... anomalous. Same profile as the first, male, 42, alcoholic, worked a dead end call center job. Same single gun shot to the chest, almost directly to the heart on 2 or 3 June, 2014. Aside from that everything was different. No organs removed, in fact no extra cuts to the body at all and rather than set a grand scene to be found the victim was shot over and subsequently wrapped up in a tarp and disposed of inside a skip. The body was not found until unloaded at the landfill several days later, the scene of the shooting has not been identified. Initially it was assumed to be a mugging gone wrong, once again it was a ballistics match that tied the victim to our killer. The police think that the killer was interrupted.”

“But of course they are wrong,” John smiled a little as he said it.

“Of course! Why would the killer have brought a tarp if he had planned to mutilate and display the body as usual? No, this was always going to be a rush job. That is also why the killer made his first mistake, all be it a little one.”

“Mistake?” John raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

“Yes, as I have said before, serial killers are tricky, you have to wait for them to make a mistake. In this case several witnesses saw the deceased the night of or before his death leaving his local pub with an average looking man of medium height with brown hair.” Sherlock pointed at a sketch that shared the center of the wall with an untidy list.

“Rather generic looking, isn't he?” John frowned at the sketch. “Looks a bit like that actor... You know, the one who played the hobbit? Elijah Wood?” Sherlock just looked at him blankly so John moved on. “Brown hair, what color eyes?”

“The witnesses could not agree, some said blue, most said brown. He might have worn color contacts part of the night then lost them.”

“So, you are saying they were not great _eye_ witnesses?” John smirked at him.

Sherlock nearly sprained a muscle rolling his eyes at that. “No, John. I would never say that.”

“Seriously though, not a lot to go on.”

“No, and the killer was smart enough not to appear at any time on the pub's security camera. Almost a year of distributing this picture has yielded nothing of value. And the body was characteristically clean of evidence as well. Again, we found ourselves at a stalemate.”

“Until yesterday, that is.”

“Yes, a new victim this time on the first day of the month. Organs taken, body carelessly discarded, hidden code. Our killer is changing his ritual. Why is he changing it?”

“Won't hurt you to eat something while you think about it, will it?” John tried. “I got an order of that garlic naan you like.”

Sherlock sighed dramatically, but took a piece of the bread. Again his distaste for eating losing out to his dislike of grumpy Johns. He should probably worry about that, but honestly he did love garlic naan. He even went so far as to dip it into the tikka masala.

John, who had finished eating, stood in front of the wall himself for a while reading the list next to the police sketch. “Okay,” he said after a moment, “I get 'right handed' and 'brown hair' but how in the world do you know 'really atrocious at poetry'?”

In retrospect, Sherlock thought maybe he should not have written one down but he just waved it off with a “John, as ever you fail to see the obvious.”

“Huh,” John did not sound convinced. He gave Sherlock an uncomfortably shrewd look and asked, “How is decoding the cipher going?”

Damn clever John! “Oh, I think it is gibberish, just a false path to try and lead us astray.”

“Okay.” an even less convinced John agreed, and blessedly changed the topic.

They ended up talking over the case and the victims in greater detail for hours and John read over the preliminary autopsy while Sherlock tried to connect the alleys chosen into any pattern. It was nearing midnight when reluctantly Sherlock asked if John should be headed home.

“Actually, if you wouldn't mind, could I kip here? I knew this would run late and I am not working tomorrow... Beside, Mary nipped off for a girl's weekend last month with Cath and owes me one.”

Sherlock felt a strange twist. Half of it was guilt for not disclosing what Mary's 'girl's weekend' had actually entailed, the other half was joy at knowing he would be treated to a John made cup of tea, toast, and a delightfully ruffled John over the breakfast table. Joy won.

“Of course you can stay, you know Mrs. Hudson keeps your room freshly made up for you.” Actually Sherlock did, but no need to admit that. 

“Ta, think I'll turn in then.”

“Hm.” Sherlock muttered, moving towards his violin case.

“You are not going to sleep at all, are you?” John sounded fond. “Well, at least violin is better than cranky baby. I'll see you in the morning.”

Sherlock carefully rosined he bow and tuned the violin, listening all the while to the sounds of shuffling about and settling in from upstairs. When it quieted down he began to play as softly as he could, only the most peaceful melodies he knew. After an hour or so when he was sure John would be asleep he replaced the violin and set to putting the leftovers away. He was going to have to move his organs to the back of the refrigerator and possible take the labels off or John might be suspicious. 

On a whim as he put the carton of rice in he took out the heart. He set the poem from on top to the side, put on gloves, and began to prepare the heart for dissection. He was not entirely surprised when halfway though he felt something lodged in the right ventricle. When removed and cleaned it proved to be a penny. Very old and worn, but the austere profile of George the Fifth was still recognizable on one side, on the other side the date was 1910 and over the seated figure of Britannia was etched the molecular structure of dopamine.

 

When John came down a few hours later Sherlock had finished the dissection and moved the containers towards the back of the refrigerator. But he could only spare a part of his thoughts for enjoying the rare breakfast with his friend, most of his mind was busy on the puzzle of his new, engaging foe.


	3. Chapter Three

For a while Sherlock kept the coin in the drawer with The Woman's phone but as the weeks passed he found himself taking it out more often. He developed a habit of standing in front of his murder wall, flicking the heavy old coin between his fingers and rolling it across his knuckles. 

John caught him at it one day in early September and joked that with that and the pick-pocketing all he needed to do would be to learn some card tricks and he would be a first rate magician. Sherlock merely rolled his eyes. The next day he had a small private case of burglary, very dull though he did have the pleasure of telling his client that the butler had indeed done it. When he got home he found a deck of cards waiting in place of his stash of cigarettes. He took it into the kitchen where he found the expected groceries, fresh milk, and, yes, even a box of his favorite chocolate Hobnobs. He stood there for a couple of minutes waiting for the tightness in his chest to pass, wishing fervently that he had found John in the kitchen too.

The card tricks did help pass the time, as did a vicious triple homicide, and he began working on more complex slight of hand. In the end he spent the first Sunday in October in Trafalgar Square with his deerstalker on the ground in front of him, busking tourists with his 'magic' and his 'mind reading.' In the afternoon, just as it was becoming too predictable, a black car and a bored looking Anthea came to collect him and return him to Baker Street and a waiting Mycroft. 

Mycroft then proceeded to lecture him about the need for public figures to maintain some level of decorum and the general harm done to society by street performers. Sherlock got to point out that having a hobby that got him out and about really helped to burn the calories. All and all the day was very rewarding. He even found later that someone had created Sherlock the Warlock a Facebook page.

When Sherlock went under protest to Olivia's 'half-birthday' in the middle of October he carried the coin with him in his wallet. By the time he was released from the holding cells after the New Scotland Yard Christmas party, still protesting the unfairness of being held at all since Stevenson had clearly thrown the first punch, he had drilled a small hole in the coin and hung it from his key ring. He got a small thrill from having the police sergeant hand his killer's coin to him.

Unfortunately that was just about the only excitement left on the Back-alley Butcher case. The leads from the fourth scene had mostly reached dead ends. The long delayed toxicology showed no trace of drugs in the victim's system, though her blood alcohol level had been so high that the medical examiner had been convinced that the woman had been unconscious at the time of death despite the blood spatter evidence indicating she had been standing when shot.

Witness reports from the pub she was last seen in agreed that she had been drinking for a while with a dark haired, average looking man. Sherlock was convinced that it had been the killer. When shown the sketch from the third victim none of the witnesses were sure it was the same man and the victim had been seen leaving alone. Given that and the lack of drugs in her system the police dismissed the man as unrelated to the murder. Idiots.

The bright side to the police force's ineptitude was their continuing failure to decode the cipher Sherlock had found. He debated just how certain the killer had been that he alone would be able to read the poem but came to no conclusions. Still, he was grateful to not have his name publicly tied to another series of crimes.

He was grateful for a lot of things. The killer given him gifts, written him poetry, and, most importantly, he had given him a puzzle. Sherlock had visited the older crime scenes, re-interviewed witnesses, watched security camera footage, searched for patterns and other hidden messages, and not been bored at all for months. 

In the cab on his way home from the night in the holding cells, Sherlock idly ran his fingers over the worn metal coin, feeling the molecule deeply engraved on it. Dopamine, the chemical of pleasure and reward, the one one laymen created with attraction and lust, the one increased by the use of cocaine. He wondered what his killer was planning for him next, but resigned himself to six more months of waiting to find out.

That made the call on Christmas day even more surprising and welcome.

 

“Now, we are not sure yet this is the same guy yet.” Lestrade warned as he ushered Sherlock past the crime scene tape and into the small brick outbuilding. It was a tight fit, the building has been divided into two narrow rooms, about four feet by eight feet. The air inside was heavy with the smell of blood.

“Of course it is the same guy.” 

“How can you be so sure? Aside from using the same gun our guy isn't very consistent.”

Sherlock tried his best 'how can you be so dense?' look on Lestrade but it was hindered by the fact he wasn't sure how he knew this was his killer. He just knew.

He was even more convinced when he saw the body displayed against the far wall. It was in five pieces, the arms and legs cleanly removed and lined up parallel to the face down torso. The exit wound, once again through the heart, was just visible under the garish red velvet bow wrapped around the torso. A macabre Christmas gift. Probably for him.

Lestrade, somewhat to Sherlock's annoyance, began to narrate the scene “Body was called in just an hour ago by a group of carolers if you can believe it. Saw the blood on the pavement and followed it back into the building.”

With some difficulty Sherlock pulled his attention from the orderly line of body parts. There was a large pool of partially frozen blood near the open door to the small space. That was interesting, why not the back corner this time?

Lestrade continued, “I'll have officers out soon doing interviews. See if anyone near by heard the gun shot.”

“Pointless, the killer is too clever for that. He has acquired some sort of silencer, not a difficult feat. I wish people were as easy to silence.” Sherlock glared at Lestrade pointedly.

“Fine I'll leave you to it. Remember not to touch anything, forensics won't arrive for another hour. I'll need you to be gone by then. Stevenson has still got a black eye and I don't fancy stopping him from killing you again. Besides,” here Lestrade smiled, “John texted and let me know you are expected for Christmas dinner at six and that he is going to hold me responsible if I don't get you into a cab and on the way before then.”

Sherlock tried another glare, but he couldn't entirely manage it. Luckily, Lestrade was already walking back out the doorway. He turned his focus back to the corpse in front of him.

Male victim, likely late 30s though it was hard to tell with the face down. Broad shoulders, well muscled under a layer of fat, did heavy manual labor. He would be able to tell what kind of labor more specifically but both hands had been mutilated, the index and middle fingers cut off both hands and the left hand was missing the ring finger. He wondered why and if they were in his refrigerator right now.

Well, four of them might be. The right index finger was actually laying on the back of the corpse, pointed almost directly out the door of the building.

This victim had been shot from behind, the bullet wound under the bow was neat and small. Maybe the victim had tried running, that would explain the blood near to the doorway. He looked closer at the arms and found no defensive wounds. There had not been a struggle, victim had just started to leave and the killer had pulled out his gun and shot him directly though the heart from behind before he could take three steps. Quick reflects on the killer's part.

“Lestrade,” Sherlock glanced towards the detective waiting just outside, “Do we know if the man was a resident of this area?”

“No, he was from up around Southgate. We found his clothes folded neatly in the other half of this building. Wallet was on top of them, open to the driver's license and with the money still inside. Killer is considerate, I'll give him that.”

“Excellent! The killer must have brought him to this spot. Check for cabs dropping off in this area last night or the cameras at the tube station. We might be able to get a picture or better description of our elusive killer.” 

He turn back to the body, posing his next question to the John in his mind palace. “Why take that chance, dragging him here? What makes this spot special?” Mind palace John pointed out that the little building with its lockable door did give the privacy and time to dismember the body on the scene as had been done. “Yes, but he could have found that several places much closer to Southgate, no the killer choose this spot for a reason. What is the message this time?”

But his allowed hour of investigation turned up no answers or further messages from his killer. The walls hid no codes and without moving anything he was very limited in what he could learn from the body itself. By the time Lestrade packed him up in a cab to John and Mary's he was actually relieved to go. Hopefully real John would be more help than mind palace John had been.

 

As ever, John was more than helpful. 

After dinner, while the three adults sat in the Watson living room watching a delighted Olivia crawl around under the tree and crumple the discarded wrapping paper, dragging the recordable stuffed rabbit Sherlock had given her around with her, Lestrade texted him with the information that when the torso had been turned over they had found writing cut into the chest. 

Only John's flat refusal to go with him back to the scene stopped Sherlock from leaving right away. Well that and John's promise that he would call in a favor with an old rugby friend at University Hospital to get him assess to the body at the morgue the next day. Lestrade did after much cajoling text Sherlock a picture of the words carved into the chest with what must have been a scalpel.

_You figured out why_  
_I do what I do?_  
_I'll no longer lie,_  
_It is partially for you._

“Well,” John said wryly, “Not sure how you knew, but you were right. The killer is bad at poetry. Who do you think the 'you' he is doing this for is?”

“Irreverent,” Sherlock said with a roll of his eyes. “It will turn out to be a parent or a celebrity or someone else the killer has deluded himself into thinking he has a relationship with.”

Mary gave Sherlock a sharp look, she had always been harder to fool than John was. Olivia choose that moment to crawl over to Sherlock and hand him the bunny, a silent but understood command for him to squeeze the button that make the animal play the short violin lullaby he had recorded on it for her, and the tension was broken.

All she said was, “Well, silencers are easy enough to make. A few parts from any DIY store and some instructions online and you are set. Maybe the guy wanted the added thrill of killing so close to people and wanted the challenge of figuring out how and where best to do that? You pointed out that it was not a bad place for a murder.”

Actually mind palace John had pointed that out, but still Sherlock huffed. “But again, it was not so good that the killer had to drag the victim there from Southgate all the way to Edgware.”

“Didn't realize the body was in Edgware.” John cut in, “I grew up around there. What was the address?” 

“Pasteur Close.” supplied Sherlock.

“Huh. Odd name, don't remember that from my childhood. Must had been build after my time.”

John might had continued talking, Sherlock wasn't sure as his remark on the street name lit his brain. Of course it was an odd name, it was the name of a famous chemist. His killer had leave him a message after all, and a finger pointing him which direction to go next. 

When he blinked back to reality from his mental map of London, the room was dark and John and Mary were in the kitchen arguing good naturally over the dishes.

He called out, “Brilliant! Text me about the autopsy tomorrow.” and let himself out of the quiet suburban flat and headed back to Baker Street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are interested, you can actually find the brick building I set this murder in on Google maps.
> 
> The finger on the torso points southeast  
> The second finger will point northeast  
> The third west southwest  
> The fourth west northwest


	4. Chapter Four

**Really? You got half the staff arrested and blew up the radiology lab? -JW**

**It was a small fire and they should not have been so transparent in their medication theft if they had not wanted to be arrested. -SH**

**Yeah, well they are still not having you back within 500 meters of the building regardless of my amazing rugby skills. You'll have to wait for the autopsy report from Lestrade. Sorry. -JW**

**I doubt this is the first time your rugby skills were insufficient for a task. -SH**

**Git. -JW**

Sherlock thought about making more of an issue out of being barred from the autopsy just for the fun of arguing with John, but it didn't seem worth the effort.

The scene had been just interesting enough with the dismemberment and the taunting poem. It would keep the police busy looking for clues and patterns when it should have been clear to them that the body was just a sideshow, a starting point for whatever grand chase the killer had designed for him. Honestly, with the ash and honey at the third scene and now with chemistry and a puzzle across London he was amazed that the police had not connected him to the crimes. They had certainly been keen to do so in the past. Idiots. 

The map that was central to his wall of murder now had seven chemistry related streets highlighted in the greater London area. The only one on the line the finger had been pointing was Dalton Street in West Norwood. That had been simple enough to figure out.

Now that he was standing on Dalton Street at the intersection nearest to where the finger indicated, he realized that he had no idea what he was looking for. Maybe this wouldn't be so simple after all.

It ended up taking him an unprecedented three days to find his killer's next message on the short street and it was really more aesthetic appreciation than by reasoning that he found it. A flash of color arrested his attention on perhaps his dozenth time by the small bit of graffiti low on a wooden fence. It was the same bright, almost florescent yellow color that he would forever associate with the Black Lotus Gang and the ASBO that John still occasionally brought up in a futile attempt to guilt Sherlock. 

When he crouched down for a better look at the half hidden artwork the yellow turned out to be the bow on a bouquet of white lacy flowers, quite recently painted, likely with a stencil. He mentally flipped through what he knew of flowers trying to place the species without much hope, botany not being a particular area of interest for him. That is why it surprised him when the name came up so quickly, fern-like leafs with blossoms radiating off a central stalk, this was Conium maculatum: hemlock. Highly poisonous, deadly. Human hearts and now lethal flowers. He smiled.

Taking out his magnifying glass, he examined the painting in more detail. Near the middle of the yellow bow where it lay over one of the thick fence posts a hole had been drilled about the size of a penny. The disturbance in the paint around the hole made it evident that it had been drilled after the painting had been done, yet it was plugged by something the very same shade of yellow. Sherlock was certain he had found the finger that he had been looking for.

Getting the finger out of the tight hole turned out to be something of an unanticipated problem. It was flush with the fence surface and Sherlock was unable to get a grip on it with his own fingers. He briefly considered coming back with pliers, but that would certainly damage it. 

He ended up having to go to a Cantonese restaurant two blocks over for a pair of chopsticks which he was able to remove it without too much pressure. He then careful closed it in one of the many evidence bags he carried in his pocket. As he suspected only the tip had been painted yellow, the rest of the finger was clean and well preserved by the colder weather. Along the underside, a line of text was carved into the thin pale flesh.

_You are gorgeous and clever_

Flattering, but not very illuminating. However, when he inserted the chopstick into the hole to test its depth and to make sure there was nothing else to be found behind the grisly token he found that the hole was not drilled straight into the fence post but was at a rather sharp angle. The finger had been pointing his way to the next clue, somewhere to the northeast.

He pocketed the finger and brought up the map of London in his mind, then considered the quickly fading winter light and the bag of takeaway he had ordered to get the chopsticks. He decided the next street could wait until tomorrow and took out his phone.

**Dinner? -SH**

**Starving- JW**

 

Mary was out of town again, John said she was visiting a sick friend. Sherlock was sure Mycroft knew where she actually was and wondered if he was employing her now. He could ask Mycroft but thought that the answer would do little good for him either way.

He and John had a quiet evening eating the decent enough Chinese food and watching Olivia crawl around energetically. She was still refusing to go anywhere without the musical stuffed rabbit Sherlock had given her. John had named the bunny Bluebell much to his own amusement. Sherlock poorly concealed how pleased he was by her attachment to the toy and spent the evening sneaking her tiny bites of lo mein as his reading had indicated that she was old enough to start being weened. 

She ended falling asleep in his arms as paced the room, discussing the case with John. When John took her up to bed Sherlock was reluctant to let her go and even more reluctant to leave. He was grateful when John offered the spare room for the night.

He was just wondering how exactly John had managed to produce a dressing gown and pajama bottoms in his size when there was a tap at the door. Expecting that John was just going to remind him of something inane like breakfast or not to look for his gun if he got bored he was surprised when a pajama clad John walked into the room with two cups of tea. He handed one to Sherlock and sat casually on the edge of the bed. It made Sherlock's heart leap unaccountably. His opening words send his heart crashing back down.

“I know I am not as brilliant as you are,” John said, “But I know there is a lot you are holding back from me right now.” 

“John, I assure you...”

John cut him off. “No, I know you too well for that now. You have been both too excited about this case and too vague about your deductions on it. The last time you were running about like this and keeping secrets it ended on the roof of St Bart's.” Sherlock winced a bit at that. John continued, “That can't happen again, you can't do that to me again Sherlock. Please, trust me with the truth.”

“I...” Sherlock started.

“No,” he said gently, “Don't lie. Tell me you won't tell me or just ignore me, that is fine. I am used to that. But no more lies.” He broke eye contact with Sherlock looking down at his tea, sorrow etched into the lines of his expressive face. “I know it is my own fault, that I surround myself with clever people who think that they know what is best for me. It is hard enough that Mary is still trying to hide things from me. I really couldn't stand it if you were lying as well.”

Sherlock looked at his friend, his only friend, shoulders rounded in defeat staring into his tea and just couldn't lie to him. He sat on the bed next to John, and hesitantly rested a hand on his arm. When he looked up from the cup in his hands Sherlock said “You don't know for sure that I was planning to lie to you.”

John huffed out a breath in disbelieve and shook his head. He then cocked an eyebrow at Sherlock.

Sherlock pretended to scowl back.

John raised the eyebrow further and slightly tilted his head.

When Sherlock tried to deepen his scowl he ended up bursting into laughter instead. John quickly broke into an unmanly giggle which just made Sherlock laugh harder.

When the laughter died down, the tension in the air was gone. Sherlock was suddenly aware that he and John were leaning into one another, and John was resting his head on Sherlock's shoulder. The impulse to kiss the top of that head was almost overwhelming. Disturbed, Sherlock shifted away before a different kind of tension could build.

He shuffled up the bed, tossing one of the pillows out of his way so he could lean against the headboard, pulling his knees up to his chest and cradling his miraculously still full mug of tea in front of them.

“Well,” he began, “You were wrong about one thing. I wasn't trying to protect you with my omission this time. I was protecting myself.” Sherlock sighed. “The killer would appear to be somewhat...” Fascinated? Intrigued? Obsessed? He searched for a more neutral word, “fixated on me.”

And the truth poured out of him. John listened as he explained the cipher and told him about the organs in his refrigerator. He recited the awful poems and fetched out his coin to show off. The severed finger however remained secreted away in his coat pocket.

Sitting on the edge of the bed next to John as he turned the coin over in his hand, Sherlock was suddenly overcome with anxiety. Had he been too excited, too ebullient? Replaying his explanations he heard all the times he had praised the killer's ingenuity, almost gushed over the care he had taken with both the planning and execution. John had been unhappy when he had seemed similarly interested in Moriarty. Could he see the difference between Moriarty's elaborate web, so grandiose and just a bit mad, and the careful craftsmanship of just one murder done with thought and skill. Would the difference matter even if Sherlock could explain it?

When John broke the small silence, it was with an unexpected question. “Dopamine, eh? Did you have this lacquered?”

“Well, it was going to be in my pocket with my keys and coins. I wouldn't want to damage a clue.”

John give him another of his too knowing looks. “Sounds like you admire this guy even though he is butchering people for his own amusement.” The 'and your amusement as well' was implied but not stated.

“Well John, I am not exactly innocent of manslaughter myself.”

“That was different, Magnussen was threatening you and by extension the whole British government.”

“Ah, yes. But you have to admit the gun to my head was proverbial, the one to his was rather more literal.”

John grinned, “Well I guess we all have that in common then. I certainly didn't have to shoot that unarmed, terminally ill cabbie. Wouldn't have done either if you weren't such an idiot.” He bumped his shoulder against Sherlock's fondly.

Sherlock however sobered slightly at the reminder. “He used my curiosity and my pride, one might even say hubris, against me as surely as any weapon. Just as Moriarty did later.”

“Are you completely sure this killer isn't doing the same?” John asked gently.

“No.” Sherlock was immediate and firm with his answer. When John kept looking at him inquiringly he continued more hesitantly. “Moriarty was always taunting me, trying to best me. That was always a competition. This killer is out to impress and engage me.”

“Is it working?”

He started to say no but before he could John rested his hand on Sherlock's knee, startling him into looking into John's eyes. And he found he couldn't lie to him, not when he had promised John the truth. Even if the truth was damning, even if it could drive another wedge between him and his only friend. “Yes, I think he has impressed me.” His eyes darted down and away from John's as he said it, unwilling to watch disapproval or more on that face.

There was a slight squeeze to his knee as John said, “Good.”

Sherlock whipped his gaze back to John's face, shocked to see a smile there.

“Well, you don't need to look so surprised.” John admonished. “If five dead bodies and three painful poems weren’t enough to draw your interest I'd say you were playing bloody hard to get.” When Sherlock just continued to stare at him, John's smile softened. “Look, as a man married to a professional assassin, I certainly can't cast any stones. You've been happy these past few months, happier than I have seen you since before your fall. I be a pretty shite friend to take that away from you.”

“John, I-” but Sherlock wasn't sure how to finish the sentence. 

John saved him pushing down on his leg to lever himself up, moving to stand in front of him. “Yeah, I know,” he said, “Sentiment and all that. Look, I am not going to tell the Met about any of this and I'll not even tell you that you should tell them. Hell, I doubt I'll even get a chance to talk to you about any of this again anytime soon with Mary and the baby around and Mycroft's spying being what it is. I am really glad you told me though.” and here he rested a hand again on Sherlock's shoulder, “And I am so glad to see you happy again.”

“John, you are always a mystery to me.” Sherlock said earnestly.

John grinned and let out an easy, “Good night Sherlock.” 

Sherlock didn't bother replying as John slipped out of the room. He laid back on the bed, comfortable in the pajamas that John kept for him, and steepled his fingers underneath his chin in thought.

 

He ended up leaving the next morning before John and the baby were up. A quick stop was made by Baker Street to drop off the first finger and to change into fresh clothes. Sherlock was on Priestley Way in Walthamstow by just after sunrise. 

It was a considerably longer street than Dalton had been but also one completely given over to large featureless industrial buildings and storage yards. Knowing what he was looking for this time and the spartan nature of the area combined to simplify his search. It was only early afternoon when the tell tale flash of yellow caught his eye.

Inconveniently it was in the car park of a seedy looking funeral service, the employees of which were already looking at him suspiciously. He had a brief moment to wish he had thought to dress in something less distinct than his current suit but he still had options. He decided on the most direct, striding to the worker who was glaring the most. He flashed him one of Lestrade's badges and adopted Lestrade's Estuary accent. “Can you direct me to the owner of this property?”

“No, can't say that she is in today.” the man replied with even greater hostility.

Sherlock wondered briefly if whatever was going on here to make them so antagonistic to the police was worth uncovering. A quick glance at the tools around the garage, at the mud on the tyres of the car, and at the tattoo just visible beneath the aggressive man's collar told him no, it was not. Robbing graves for jewelry and to resell the plots, how 1800s of them.

He sighed, allowing a world of boredom to enter his voice as he said, “Fine, look, could you do us a favor? I am just just here investigating the reports of vandalism in the area, you've got a bit of graffiti there. Give me five minutes, I'll take a picture and a couple measurements for my report and be out of your hair.”

The man relaxed a bit but still looked wary and truculent so Sherlock lowered his voiced and added coaxingly, “Please, I still got three more streets today and it is miserable fucking cold.” He pretended to consider for a second then continued, “I got a mate over in the works department, give me my five minutes and I'll get him to add you to the cleaning roster tomorrow instead of you having to do it yourself.”

The man's eyes lit at that, and Sherlock congratulated himself on picking avarice over intimation. The man still tried to sound grudging as he conceded, “Fine, five minutes. But that clean up crew best be here early tomorrow Inspector...?”

“Dimmock.” Sherlock answered, smiling. “They will be. Thanks.”

After a handshake Sherlock strode over to the large overgrown bush that partially hid the little painting. He made a show of taking several pictures on his phone while he examined the work. 

This time the flowers where purple and hung bells like from a single stem. Digitalis his mind palace supplied, more commonly called foxglove, able to cause arrhythmia and heart failure, admittedly more often as a plot device in popular culture than in reality, but still certainly deadly.

He pulled a measuring tape out of one of his coat's many pockets and started measuring as an excuse to get closer to the space, looking for the finger that must be there. But the wall was smooth, unmarred by any holes one might find a stray digit in. The ground around the wall was clear and undisturbed as well. Sherlock felt the eyes of the hostile workmen back on him and knew his five minutes and his host's good will were just about up. Reluctantly he started back to the main street, he would have to come back that night to search further. 

As he was turning the bush next to the wall caught his coat and tugged his arm backward. For a second he was annoyed but then it hit him, of course, the bush would be the best place to hide the finger. He pretended to be quite stuck on the branch while he search the bare limbs for anything remotely phalanged. 

It was down near the ground, tied neatly to a branch with thick black thread. Sherlock stilled the bush, noted that the finger pointed south west, then quickly bend down to untie it under the pretext of picking up several small items he had purposely spilled from his pocket.

When he had collected everything back into his pocket, finger and string included, he walked out of the car park with a friendly seeming nod to the workmen. He walked south along Blackhorse Lane resisting the impulse to take the finger back out and read the words on it. Instead he looked for a cab to take him home where he could read them securely and where he could check his map for the next street on his macabre scavenger hunt.


	5. Chapter Five

_As I'm sure you're aware_

Sherlock looked at the line on his new finger. Not terribly enlightening really. He took the first finger out of the refrigerator and lined them up on the kitchen table, wondering if it was significant that the text was craved in different directions on the two digits. The first one had the words starting at the cut end, the second from the fingertip. He decided it was probably just an aesthetic choice.

The black thread though turned out to be surprisingly informative. It was actually a length of heavy nylon surgical suture, multifilament, coated, and non-absorbable. He found the brand name and manufacturer, but it was unhelpfully common and would not be hard to find in any surgery or A&E in London. Still, it was another tie from his killer to the medical profession and implied that he still worked in the field to have such ready access to sutures. 

Sherlock regretted now having untied the finger so hastily. He had been sure the knot holding it to the branch had been a simple square knot, but would he have noticed the couple of extra twists that differentiated a square knot and a surgeon's knot? Why hadn't he thought to take a picture of the finger before he took it? Why hadn't he just come back that night and taken his time? He spent several unproductive minutes pacing the kitchen and berating himself.

When he had calmed down somewhat he settled back in to a chair and looked again at the message the killer had left for him. At least someone thought he was clever, he thought, still angry at his mistake. But then, a lot of people called him clever and smart. They also called him freak and psychopath. Only John had ever called him amazing and fantastic. No one had ever called him gorgeous before.

He wondered what the next line would be. Likely it would rhyme with clever. Never maybe? Or sever? Trevor? There was a thought, though he was sure that no one but Mycroft had ever known of the one friend he had in uni. And it took only a couple of minutes on Facebook looking at Victor's picture perfect wife and kids and their horribly normal life in Cardiff to dismiss him as a suspect. He thought of looking longer at the pictures and deducing the flaws in that idyllic household but stopped himself. It had been almost twenty years after all and it apparently wouldn't help him find his killer.

Instead he printed a picture of the bouquet and of the finger he had found today and added them to the newly moved murder wall he had for this case. He now kept it in his bedroom away from public view. He marked the location of the second finger on the map and lightly penciled in a line for the new direction he had been pointed in. Again he was annoyed with himself for removing the finger so fast, as the line didn't seem to lead to any of the streets named after chemists he had marked. If he was wrong and the line should have been a bit more northerly it could point to Curie Court in Harrow. If it had been considerably more south pointing it could lead to Boyle Street in Mayfair. Neither seemed particularly likely.

Either one could wait for tomorrow he decided. Still he spend several more minutes gazing at his private wall. He wondered a bit at the strange patience he had for this case. He had dug through garbage in the dead of the night for far less interesting problems, looking for evidence a lot harder to spot then a bright yellow bow. Yet, here he was contently waiting for good light to continue this hunt.

He told himself that he just didn't want to rush, that he could destroy more clues as he had by removing the second finger too fast. Deep down he knew that he just did not want the game to be over yet.

 

Curie Court was clearly wrong, he knew it immediately. It turned out to be not a street as the map had lead him to believe but rather just a single bland block of flats. Since he had come all the way out he did make an effort. He walked around the building, searched the grassy common area it bordered, and followed a resident through the locked door to prowl the hallways. They were as innocuously blank as the exterior walls had been. Even the names on the mail boxes in the lobby completely failed to be relevant and he decided to give the whole place up as a bad job.

Boyle Street was if anything worse. Extremely short and busy, there was just no way the killer could have found the privacy he would need to hide a finger. Sherlock didn't even get out of the cab he had drive him down the street just directed it to take him back to Baker Street.

That evening Sherlock suffered the indignity of having to search 'famous chemists' on the internet. He pride was further hurt when that search gave him two more streets, both more likely to hide the next finger.

The humbling was well worth it though when less than an hour on Franklin Street in Stamford Hill yielded him a bright bouquet stenciled onto the side of one of the brick houses. The finger was wedged solidly in between the bricks, the side facing out once again painted yellow to match the bow.

The plant pictured was less flowery than the last two had been, its dark green leaves punctuated more by large black berries them by the small purple flowers. Of course it was Atropa belladonna or deadly nightshade. How wonderfully dramatic.

This time Sherlock took an over abundance of pictures and used a newly downloaded compass app on his phone to take the down the new direction for his search before he carefully removed the finger from its spot. He couldn't resist reading the newly reveled line of text as he placed it in the waiting plastic bag.

_I'd love you forever_

'That is... unexpected.' he thought to himself. Something uncomfortable stirred in his chest, he wasn't sure why. He didn't want to think about why.

It was still well before noon when he finished at Franklin Street, which left him with something of a quandary. On the one hand, the new line pointed clearly north-northwest and even without consulting the map in his mind palace he was sure he knew where the last finger would be. The audacity just fit his killer too well. On the other hand it also seemed important to get the finger he had just found refrigerated soon. It was not in bad shape for a part that had been severed a week before. He thought that actually it was in surprisingly good shape and he made a note to test it for freezing. That just made the question of whether or no to take it back to the flat to properly store it worse.

In the end he simply could not resist the pull of the last clue, though he did stop at a corner shop for a bag of frozen peas to preserve his current finger. 

Sherlock had a strong feeling of deja vu standing in front of the little brick building on Curie Court again. It looked almost the same as it had the week prior though without all the milling police the area felt abandoned and desolate.

The crime scene tape had been removed from the doors to the shack so at least Stevenson and his lot had finished fumbling about. Unfortunately in its place a large new padlock gleamed in the brittle afternoon light. Sherlock debated the wisdom of picking the lock in broad daylight then he just went ahead and did it anyway. The area stayed empty for the couple of minutes it took him to get the lock off, and he slipped into the building without any trouble leaving the door open behind him for better lighting.

It wasn't hard to find the graffiti, the bright yellow stood out sharply on the brick wall over where the pile of body parts had been. However, he was surprised to see that it was not a new flower for him. Rather the yellow ran the length of the wall in five parallel lines, a musical stave with the notes done in black. In the center of the line of music hung an actual fresh bouquet of purple flowers and dark green foliage wrapped in yellow satin ribbon. The last finger poked up from among the flowers and black sutures had been used to tie a large copper penny to the arrangement. King George's profile seemed particularly austere against the bright yellow ribbon. 

Sherlock had reached out to turn over the coin before he checked himself. Photographs first, then he would take the flowers home to study. After all he did not know how long he could count on the open door going unnoticed and it would be very hard to explain away being caught here with two fingers off the murdered man. Besides, he admitted to himself that he would rather be safe at home before reading the last line of this poem.

When the pictures were taken he gave himself an extra two minutes to examine the rest of the room but found nothing else out of the ordinary. He could only hope that the killer didn't leave another hint as subtle as the honeyed numbers at this scene as he removed the bouquet and locked the door again on his way out. 

His usual luck at finding cabs failing him and thinking it best not to chance calling a cab to a crime scene, Sherlock took the Tube home. It was miserable and crowded and he received a few odd looks for the way he carefully cradled the small bunch of flowers. No one noticed the finger though, so he counted it as a win.

Back at Baker Street, he cleared part of the kitchen table and set the flowers down. He felt the way he thought people meant when they described a child on Christmas morning, excited and unsure what to unwrap first.

It turned out the coin wasn't just tied to the ribbon, it was sewn on with two neat stitches through the hole the killer had thoughtfully drilled himself this time. Sewn with the same black sutures in an interrupted vertical mattress stitch or as close to one as you could get suturing thin ribbon. So the killer was a surgeon, Sherlock thought. Then he had to admit that the killer could also just be deluded enough to think he was a surgeon or clever enough to try to make Sherlock believe he was a surgeon for his own reasons. Considered that way the sutures didn't help narrow the field of suspects that much.

Still, the less logical part of his brain, the part that he seemed to be relying on more and more in this case to his own consternation, knew his killer was a surgeon. He could justify the conclusion in a number of ways but really it came down to just knowing.

He cut the stitches off close to the ribbon to preserve the knots and finally allowed his attention to turn to the coin. As he turned it over to see the Britannia side, he refused to admit to holding his breath. The year of this coin was 1913 and etched on it was a molecular structure that he recognized as serotonin, the chemical that happiness was attributed to it. Sherlock scoffed, clearly the killer had been spending too much time on websites that prattled on about 'the science of love' or some such nonsense. Still, he couldn't fault the thought.

Next he carefully unwrapped the ribbon from the base of the flowers, freeing the finger with as little disturbance as possible to the arrangement. He read the last line of the poem, blinked, then got up and fetched the other three fingers out of the refrigerator so he could read them altogether.

_You're gorgeous and clever_  
_as I'm sure you're aware_  
_I'd love you forever_  
_if you'd just let me care_

The part of his brain that had pointed out that the killer might not be a surgeon muttered something about crazy people and their often harmful and short term fixations. The less logical part had already created a marble wall in this case's room in the mind palace and engraved the short poem on it, terrible as it might be. The mind palace version of Mycroft was there to make sure he remembered that caring, let alone love, was not an advantage until mind palace John shooed him away and pointed Sherlock at a different memory in the room. Again he saw John again as he had been after hearing the whole truth about this killer, standing in his pajamas, holding an empty cup of tea and telling him that he seemed happy.

Sherlock looked again at the coin, the lines that represented serotonin gleaming copper in the florescent light. Was he happy? Why was he the last one to notice? Why did the thought of catching the killer and turning him over to the police suddenly seem so unappealing?

He wasn't sure how long he stood there staring blankly at the coin, thinking, but eventually he was able to shove the thoughts away and return to the task.

Only the flowers remained to be analyzed, but they were puzzling. For one thing they were fresh, not more than a couple of days old. That told him that the killer had been watching him and had waited to plant the flowers until he had found the third finger.

Also, after several minutes he had to admit that he did not recognize any of the three flower types in the bunch though he was sure that the foliage was ivy. Again it took a demeaning internet search to find his answers. Lily of the valley, heliotrope, and violets. While lily of the valley could be poisonous the others could be hardly be qualified as such.

It took a couple more hours of searching the internet before he stumbled on a site that featured all four of the plants in any useful context, well, that is if you could call Victorian flower meanings useful. It was absurd but also somehow right for another message from his killer. Lily of the valley for sweetness, ivy for friendship, violets for loyalty, and heliotrope for eternal love. How literally and figuratively flowery, but it made him smile. He was sure to hang the flowers upside down to dry and preserve them.

It was now by route more than with any expectation that he dusted the ribbon and the coin for fingerprints. The partial but clear thumb print just over the minting year on the coin took him completely by surprise. 

It was clear right away that it would not be enough of a print to bother searching the NSY database. If he wanted to break into Mycroft's office again he likely could find at least some possibilities in the combined resources available to the British Government. But he didn't want Mycroft to get interested or, god help him, involved in this. He had been delightfully hands off for a change since Sherlock's five minute trip towards Serbia and relapse and he didn't want to risk breaking the detente.

Besides, it wouldn't be fair he thought. This was a game just between him and the killer.

When he was done transferring the print he applied more dust to the coin, he wanted the finger print to be visible if not entirely usable after the coin was lacquered. He was sure the print was left intentionally, the placement and clarity left him no doubt on that front, but that didn't tell him why the killer would take the risk. It was something he pondered as he began to pack away the rest of his new possessions.

 

It turned out to be harder than anticipated to identify the song that had been painted on the wall. The length, which was only about ten seconds, made it clear it was not the entire song and the spacing and simplicity of the notes made it clear that it was not a classical piece and therefore was not in his realm of expertise. Yet it was clearly and puzzlingly scored for the violin. He tried looking at popular songs with violin parts but to no avail so he decided it must be an adaptation of a song. He tried playing it to various music recognition apps with similarly disappointing results. Asking Lestrade was out of the question, he would want to know why and the song was still there at the murder scene to be found. Asking John, with whom he could be truthful about the reason, felt like cheating.

In the end and after more than a month of looking and listening to so much horrible modern music that he was almost mad with it he took the piece and his violin to the luthier he went to when his Strad was in need. After explaining that a friend had given the piece to him as a lark and was refusing to tell him why it was funny, which didn't even feel like a lie, the shop owner agreed to help.

After playing the ten seconds of music a couple of times, a look of dawning comprehension bloomed on the man's face. Sherlock stopped in the middle and demanded, “Well?”

The man just smiled, “That is certainly the first time I have heard Rush played on a priceless violin. Here, play it one more time.”

Sherlock complied and to his surprise the man sang along in a high voice.

_What you say about his company_  
_Is what you say about society_  
_Catch the mist, catch the myth_  
_Catch the mystery, catch the drift_

“That is 'Tom Sawyer' by Rush, your friend has good taste in music if obscure taste in jokes. Does that make any sense to you?” the man asked.

“No, but it might when I hear the rest of the song.” Sherlock answered, packing his violin away. “Do you happen to have the music sheets for it?”

Of course the shop did and Sherlock was quickly back out on the street with a thick spiral bound book of Rush music. Only love for the violin in his other hand kept him from reading through the song right there on the pavement, he managed to wait until he got into the cab home before quickly skimming the lyrics. Then he read through them more closely, puzzled.

If he where honest with himself he had been expecting a love song, something sentimental and full of promises like the last poem had been. These lyrics were, well, very opaque. He had no idea where to start. Was he a modern day warrior or was the killer? What were either of them saying about society? 

He printed out the entire song and hung it beneath the picture of the stave on the brick wall. It churned in the back of his mind and he took to playing it on violin endlessly. Eventually he began learning the rest of the songs in his Rush book just for variety. 

When John walked in on him playing Limelight he just smiled sort of sadly and said, “My dad loved that song. Used to play all that sort of music when he got back from the pub at night. It make us all barmy.”

John almost never talked about his childhood and Sherlock had privately concluded that he had good reason not to. Unsure how to respond to his comment now Sherlock just nodded and the conversation moved on.

By unspoken agreement they had not talked about the Back-alley Butcher case since that night Sherlock had told him all, but sometimes the knowledge seemed to hang in the air between them. He was tempted every time he saw him to tell him all the new things he had found, hoping for a question or statement to spark a new line of inquiry as John so often did, but the time was never right. Before a chance presented itself the postcards began to arrive and he was distracted again. 

The first postcard was delivered on 14 February though he did not actually read it until two days later. It had been sent the week before from America, post marked from Akorn, Ohio and read:

_Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,_  
_Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!_  
_**I** feel a nameless sadness o’er me roll._  
_Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,_  
_We know, we know that we can smile;_  
_But there ‘s a something in this breast,_  
_To which thy light words bring no rest,_  
_And thy gay smiles no anodyne;_  
_Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,_  
_And turn those limpid eyes on mine,_  
_And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul._

The I at the beginning of the third line had been highlighted and Sherlock had no idea why. He was almost relieved when the second postcard came a week later though this one featured no highlighted letters.

The cards came one a week regularly and Sherlock was given another puzzle without a solution to haunt the back of his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent an ungodly amount of time working out this puzzle. So please forgive me this very long end note, I still live in the hope that someone out there might want to try to work out my clues but I didn't want to slow down the story with ten poems. Also forgive me for abridging some of these poems, it had to be done for them to begin to fit in this space. Do skip this if you are here for the story and not a challenge. Either way, thanks so much for reading!
> 
> 22 February from Mobile, Alabama
> 
> When April bends above me  
> And finds me fast asleep,  
> Dust need not keep the secret  
> A live heart died to **keep**.  
>   
> 
> 28 February from Chicago, Illinois 
> 
> i carry your heart with me (i carry it in  
> my heart) i am never without it (anywhere  
> i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done  
> by only me is your doing, my darling)  
> i fear  
>  
> 
> 9 March from Conway, Arkansas
> 
> The best part  
> is when we’re tired  
> of it all  
> in the same degree,  
> a fatigue we imagine  
> to be temporary,  
> and we lie near each other,  
> toes touching.  
> What’s done is done,  
> we don’t say,  
> to begin our transaction,  
> each letting go of something  
> without really  
> bringing it to mind  
> until we’re lighter,  
> sicker,  
> older  
> and a current  
> runs between us  
> where our toes touch.  
> It feels unconditional.
> 
>  
> 
> 15 March from Gary, Indiana
> 
> To be the name uttered, but not to have the burden to be  
> To be the name said, but not heard  
> To not breathe anymore, to be the thing  
> To be the thing being breathed  
> To not be about to die, to be already dead  
> To not have to disappoint  
> To not have the burden of being late  
> Or punctual  
> To not eat, to not have to eat  
> To not feel anything  
> To not be the one whose affect is criticized
> 
>  
> 
> 20 March from St. Cloud, Minnesota
> 
> You came in out of the night  
> And there were flowers in your hands,  
> Now you will come out of a confusion of people,  
> Out of a turmoil of speech about you.  
> I who have seen you amid the primal things  
> Was angry when they spoke your name  
> In ordinary places.  
> I would that the cool waves might flow over my mind,  
> And that the world should dry as a dead leaf,  
> Or as a dandelion seed-pod and be swept away,  
> So that I might find you again,  
> Alone.
> 
>  
> 
> 31 March from Rochester, New York 
> 
> For I have known them all already, known them all—  
> Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,  
> I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;  
> I know the voices dying with a dying fall  
> Beneath the music from a farther room.  
> So how should I presume?
> 
>  
> 
> 5 April from Shreveport, Louisiana
> 
> Strephon kissed me in the spring,  
> Robin in the fall,  
> But Colin only looked at me  
> And never kissed at all.
> 
> Strephon’s kiss was lost in jest,  
> Robin’s lost in play,  
> But the kiss in Colin’s eyes  
> Haunts me night and day.
> 
>  
> 
> 13 April from Harper's Ferry, West Virginia
> 
> By the margin, willow-veiled,  
> Slide the heavy barges trailed  
> By slow horses; and unhailed  
> The shallop flitteth silken-sailed  
> Skimming down to Camelot:  
> But who hath seen her wave her hand?  
> Or at the casement seen her stand?  
> Or is she known in all the land,  
> The Lady of Shalott?
> 
>  
> 
> 18 April from Chickasha, Oklahoma
> 
> I think I should have loved you presently,  
> And given in earnest words I flung in jest;  
> And lifted honest eyes for you to see,  
> And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;  
> And all my pretty follies flung aside  
> That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,  
> Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,  
> Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.  
> I, that had been to you, had you remained,  
> But one more waking from a recurrent dream,  
> Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,  
> And walk your memory’s halls, austere, supreme,  
> A ghost in marble of a girl you knew  
> Who would have loved you in a day or two.
> 
>  
> 
> 26 April from Joplin, Missouri
> 
> Morning’s a new bird  
> stirring against me  
> out of a quiet nest,  
> coming to flight—
> 
> quick-changing,  
> slow-nodding,  
> breath-filling body,
> 
> life-holding,  
> waiting,  
> clean as clear water,
> 
> warmth-given,  
> fire-driven  
> kindling companion,
> 
> mystery and mountain,  
> dark-rooted,  
> earth-anchored.


	6. Chapter Six

The postcards tended to come towards the beginning of the week though it was still maddeningly random. Sherlock concluded that the day they arrived did not have anything to do with the puzzle as it was outside the killer's control. Not so easy to decide was how the killer was having the cards sent. It seemed unlikely that he was on a tour of America especially as every card was written in different handwriting, none of which matched the killer's. 

Sherlock considered how he would do it, then found a popular American website for classified ads that covered may different cities. As soon as he received the second card he began posting a question to that area's website. He got lucky in Gary, Indiana and again in Chickasha, Oklahoma, finding people who had answered a post offering payment or a trade for anyone willing to send a poem to someone's boyfriend for a bit of a romantic mystery. Of course by then he had already deciphered the code but was happy to have his theory on how it was done confirmed.

It has been the incorrect spacing of the E. E. Cummings poems that had made him think the word count was important. From there it had been a matter of figuring out which letter he was to count to. The highlighted I in the first poem was his only clue there. His first hypothesis, that the seventeenth letter in every poem would be the message, was clearly wrong by the third postcard. It was with a little more thought that he found the correlation between seventeen and the state of Ohio, it having been the seventeenth state added to the United States. From there it was just a matter of waiting for all the postcards to arrive to complete the message. Sherlock was horrible at waiting.

There were other cases of course, both from the Met and privately. The usual run of murders, thefts, and boring cheating spouses. A particularly involving case at the end of March had him go undercover for two weeks as a French businessman during which he dissolved a gang guilty of human trafficking, whale smuggling, and, perhaps worst of all, running a chain of take-away sushi restaurants. It meant that he came home to find three postcards and the end of the first line waiting for him. It was a blessing as that line turned out to be:

_I keep you near_

Which made the rational part of him point out that many serial killers fancied that they had a personal connection to the people they were obsessed with. That didn't stop him from making a chart in his mind palace of all the people he had come into regular contact with in the two years since his return and begin establishing alibis for them during each Back-Alley murder. It was a tense couple of days until he was able to definitively rule out Anderson as being in Wales visiting family during the second murder. He was unquestionably relieved. 

The rest of the list was a bit harder to narrow down. Sherlock had never been known for small talk and there were no subtle way he could ask where people had been for Christmas more than four months after the fact. He did his best through a combination of indirect inquiry and social media stalking, but the list of people who could both know him and be the killer stayed longer than he would have thought for a man with just one friend.

And still he waited as the new poem was reveled line by line. He wondered if it was going to be the standard four line poem the killer usually employed and if so would he have the patience for approximately six more months of unraveling. He rather thought he would go mad waiting.

He knew that he was teetering on the edge of dangerously obsessed already, that his lack of sleep and irregular meals were beginning to be noticed by even the unobservant. It was almost amusing how each person close to him reacted in a different but utterly predictable way. The tea that just sort of happened in the mornings now came with scones and biscuits, there had been a 'drugs bust' last week, and just yesterday he had come home from a case and been forced to sweep and debug the flat.

John's reaction was his favorite though. Now that Olivia was past her first birthday Mary had returned to work at the surgery in the evenings, just to get out of the house she said. So three days a week John worked an early morning shift and they traded Olivia in passing when Mary came in for the afternoon shift. Without fail on these days John brought the baby by Baker Street and spent the afternoon with Sherlock.

This meant that Sherlock had to keep the flat clean enough for a newly fledged toddler to explore without any danger and that he had to have enough healthy food in the house to feed said toddler. It was a simple yet surprisingly devious way to make Sherlock take at least marginal care of himself and his surroundings. He was actually a bit impressed at John's ingenuity, especially after he managed to train Olivia to only eat a bite of food after her Uncle 'Shock' did. And the clever child could always tell if he was faking a bite. He supposed he should be more worried that her and John were already conspiring against him but it was just so fatally adorable.

It was after a particularly lovely one of these evenings, where John had made the thing with peas and Olivia had learned two new words in French, that he stood in front of his murder wall as he did most nights. Only tonight he glimpsed something in the background of one of the photographs of the fourth victim. Just visible at the edge of the picture scratched into the paint of the skip behind the body there was the beginning of a five line stave and a single note.

The next twenty-seven hours were a flurry of activity for Sherlock, first finding that none of the photographs he had in the flat showed anymore of the music, he then found there wasn't a better view in any of the ones the police had taken that a very rumbled and grumpy Lestrade let him into New Scotland Yard to see well after midnight. That morning he discovered that the skip had been moved from the alley so he had to spend the rest of the day pretending to be a new employee at the refuse management company until he could access their records for its new location. The late afternoon found him unlawfully skulking about the company's storage yard, furtively examining all the skips until he found the right one. It had been repainted so Sherlock was grateful that the killer had scratched the lines in deeply rather then painting them on. The pictures he took were not very clear, but he had come prepared and was able to take a legible rubbing.

By that time the luthier's shop was closed for the night. Sherlock considered taking his violin to the streets and playing the handful of notes until someone could tell him what the bloody song was but decided that it was not worth it to provoke Mycroft any further.

The shop owner smiled when he opened his doors the next morning to find Sherlock on the pavement waiting. He asked “Bring me another song, Mr Holmes?”

Sherlock just scowled, pulling out his violin.

It took longer for the man to identify this song, as it turned out the snippet he had been given was not a part of the chorus. Finally he did catch on and sang:

_And if you say to me tomorrow, oh what fun it all would be._  
_Then what's to stop us, pretty baby. But what is and what should never be._

Sherlock left the store with yet another thick book of sheet music, this time from a band called Led Zeppelin, pondering just what his killer thought was stopping them and if the answer did lie with him.

 

The last word of the second line of poetry arrival in the mail at the end of April, hidden in a rather more abstract poem then usual. Completed the couplet read:

_I keep you near_  
_but you have never seen me clear_

Looked at one way it could be read as a taunt, the killer trying to goad Sherlock for being so blind but he doubted that was the way it was meant. 

Sherlock had been called many things in his life, inhuman, freak, devil, arsehole, to name a few but he had never by anyone's stretch of imagination been called a poetry lover. And yet he had now spent countless hours reviewing these eleven poems, memorizing them, studying them, trying to interpret them. It didn't seem like a coincidence that of those eleven poems four were arguable about love lost, mainly through inaction, and three were about love kept secret. In that context the couplet certainly seemed more sad and full of regret than it was taunting.

When the next postcard arrived on 30 April, just four days after the last one he was surprised that the killer was going to drag the same game out. That surprise was fleeting as several other facts about the new card registered. Rather than the usual peaceful landscape the front of this one featured a garish picture of some place called The London Dungeon, seemingly a tourist trap not four miles from Baker Street. Also the handwriting did match the samples he had from the killer, and, perhaps most notably, the card had not been postmarked or even addressed. 

That meant that sometime in the last twenty-four hours while Sherlock had been at home working on his experiments and practicing playing 'Over Hills and Far Away' on his violin the killer had been on the doorstep of 221B and had slipped this through the mail slot. 

Sherlock felt an undeniable thrill. Eagerly he turned his eyes to the poem:

_You'll love me yet!—and I can tarry_  
_Your love's protracted growing:_  
_June reared that bunch of flowers you carry_  
_From seeds of April's sowing._

_I plant a heartful now: some seed_  
_At least is sure to strike,_  
_And yield—what you'll not pluck indeed,_  
_Not love, but, may be, like!_

_You'll look at least on love's remains,_  
_A grave's one violet:_  
_Your look?—that pays a thousand pains._  
_What's death?—You'll love me yet!_

'Well,' He thought, 'that is not very subtle.'

So his killer was feeling fairly confident of Sherlock's growing regard, and it sounded like June would see his next step in fostering it further. Well, that gave Sherlock at least a month to prepare. He could work with that.

He took the postcard upstairs to be fingerprinted and analyzed. There were two hours until John and Olivia would be there for the evening and for a change he had a lot of work to fill them.

 

The couple swayed drunkenly along the pavement, laughing and in the woman's case singing loudly and very off key. Sherlock slouched farther into the shadow of the doorway he had been stationed in since early that evening, observing the pair. They looked promising especially when the woman stumbled and the man easily caught her elbow. Either he had supernaturally good reflexes or he was not as drunk as he was trying to seem. He was also the right height and build to be the man seen last with the third victim. By the time the man steered the woman into the alley way Sherlock was already standing, knowing this was his killer.

He stalked across the street, trying for a balance between stealth and speed, though he probably needn't have bothered as the woman was now talking loudly. As he neared the alley he could pick out her words.

“...in a bloody alley? I thought we were going back to yours.”

“Oh, come on now, pet, don't you fancied a bit of fun on the way there?” was the reply. This voice was more quiet but still it froze Sherlock were he stood half way into the alley.

He could just see the outlines of two figures, one leading the other still by the elbow towards the unlit back corner of the street. 

The women was protesting halfheartedly, “I dunno, can't we just wait? I don't want to muck up this skirt...”

“Oh I promise princess, give me just a minute and you'll forget all about your skirt.” The man tried to purr it out like a seduction, but to Sherlock he just sounded amused.

It was only when the man reached towards his lower back, undoubtedly for his gun, that Sherlock was able to move. He took two quick steps forward and croaked out, shocked and disbelieving, “John?”

The figure whipped around, hand still to his back. Sherlock just stood there in the middle of the alley, the faint light from the street outlining his distinctive silhouette but shrouding his face in shadows. Amazingly, as the man took in the sight his hand dropped from the weapon and walked toward Sherlock bringing his face into the greater light. It was unmistakeably the face of John Watson stretched into a grin that was equal parts mischief and delight. 

“Sherlock, finally!” he said, taking a step towards him. His smile died on his face when Sherlock took an answering step back. When he took another step only to have it mirrored again his face became confused and hurt.

The stalemate only held for a few seconds until the woman, still loudly slurring her words demanded “Oi, Jamie. What is happening, who is this man? Fuck, are we going to be arrested?” She teetered to John, gripping his arm.

“Oh, sorry pet. This is my boyfriend.” John answered her with a convincingly awkward smile.

“Oh, bloody hell.” She dropped her hand from John's arm as if burned.

“Look maybe it would be best if you got out of here, yeah? I think you can find a cab in a couple of streets.”

“Right. Well, thanks for nothing you wanker.” she said, already making her unsteady way towards the main street. And she continued to mutter about 'fucking poofs' and how this was the worst night of her life as Sherlock watched her walk pass him. 

When he turned back to face John, his mischievous grin was back. “She has no idea how bad her night would have been if you hadn't shown up.”

Against his will, Sherlock's lips twitched in an answering smile that he then ruthlessly repressed.

The silence stretched out between them again, Sherlock's mind reeling and John seemingly unsure of what to say. 

Finally, John broke the stillness with a half shrug, “This is a turn-up, isn't it Sherlock?”

Again Sherlock almost laughed, then just as quickly he found himself flushed with anger. “John, what-”

But he was cut off “Not John. My name is Hamish.”

“What?” Sherlock was all but consumed with his sudden rage. “You can not expect me to believe that you are not John Watson.” He bit out the words.

The man who said he was not John heaved a great sigh, “No, I dare say that I can't. But that is the truth. Well, sort of the truth. Look, is there anyway we can go somewhere more comfortable to talk this out?” Sherlock just kept glaring, so he sighed again and continued on. “God, I was really hoping you would work it out on your own because it is going to sound insane.” A slight grin returned to his face. “I guess it is insane, literally.” He paused for a second as if waiting for a response. Receiving none he returned to his narrative.

“Alright, I know you know that John had a pretty shite childhood. Alcoholism, abuse, and neglect. But I don't think you know how bad it was because what our parents stressed above everything was keeping up appearances. They wanted us to look normal and happy no matter what. Haven't you ever wondered how John is so able to take everything you do in stride? No? Well, he was well trained in childhood to not make too much of a fuss or else.

“To make a long story short it was an incredibly miserable childhood. It all sort of came to a head when Harry came out to our parents very publicly when John was eleven and she left him there alone to deal with the consequences. Things were very bad that year,” he shuttered slightly at the memory, Sherlock couldn't discern if it was rage or fear. Either way, John's eyes were steely as he went on. “Then when he was twelve our father caught him kissing another boy. John doesn't remember that, and he'll tell you about how he was walking home and was beaten by a gang in a mugging gone wrong. He likes to tell people how he woke up at the hospital with his leg broken in three places, a concussion, and two broken ribs among other injuries and how the doctors were so kind and so in charge that he decided right then that he was going to be a doctor too.

“What he doesn't tell people because he doesn't remember it is the look on our father's face as he beat us, how he just left us there in an alley to be found or to bleed to death without a look back, or how when he woke up in that hospital he was no longer alone in his own head. When he opened his eyes again I was there looking out with him.

“They used to call it multiple personalities, now that call it dissociative identity disorder and debate if it actually exists which I think is hilarious. I think he needed a place to keep all his rage and violence and, lets be honest, latent homosexuality, so he could be the perfect child aga- ”

But Sherlock interrupted. “No, that is preposterous. It is impossible.”

“No, it is just improbable.” The man before him replied almost gently, “You know how you once told me that once you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth? I clearly exist and just as clearly John has no idea that I do. You once pointed out that you drugged him and he missed a whole Wednesday without noticing a thing. Didn't you think that was odd? He blames the conclusion he had from that beating for giving him lapses in memory and making him prone to blackouts and has worked hard to appear normal anyway. But those blackouts are actually just times when I am in control.”

Sherlock was still shaking his head vehemently, so Hamish asked “Why would I lie about this? What would that gain me? If you had found just John in this alley way, what would you had done? If he had been the one writing you love poems and leaving you puzzles would you have turned him in? No. You would have been thrilled if John had turned out to be your secret admirer. Instead I am here with a nearly impossible story and no way to prove it. Tell me my love, do you have a good explanation for that?”

His mind was racing, but Sherlock could not come up with an answer that made any more sense than the one he was being presented. “No, I guess not Jo- Hamish?” He said the new name questioningly.

Hamish beamed at him. “You would have loved the trail I had laid out for you from this murder, it was going to involve famous paintings, anagrams, and more popular music. It would have been great. It still could be great if you want it to be. It is all laid out for you love, I could just give you the first step. Or is the game only fun if there is someone dead in it?”

The question could have sounded snide or patronizing, but the look on Hamish's face was fond, his tone teasing. This time when he took a step toward Sherlock, Sherlock did not back away.

Hamish stood almost chest to chest with him, looking earnestly up into his eyes. “I can never be John Watson, I can never be the man who saves lives and keeps you right. But I am the man who has run down countless dark streets with you, hot after a criminal. I have giggled with you at crime scenes and sat with you on danger nights. I have loved you with my entire, if admittedly fragmented, heart. And in all that time, for all your genius and observational powers you have never once seen me.

“So, now that you do know me will you be willing to give me a chance? Do you think,” here his voice hitched, “Do you think I can ever be enough for you to love, as I love you?”

Sherlock was frozen again, he really had to stop freezing up before it became a habit. But he couldn't think of moving right now though because Hamish was slowly threading his fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and putting his head down. The shorter man leaned up towards him on the balls of his feet and their lips met. 

The kiss was sweet and chaste, Hamish still had one hand in his hair, the other rested on his waist, gently tethering them together but not at all confining. Hamish had his eyes closed Sherlock distantly noted. He himself lacked enough control over his transport to close his own eyes.

Hamish broke the kiss but he didn't pull away far. He looked at Sherlock tenderly, now stroking his cheek. He whispered “Sherlock?” 

The question behind the word was clear, and it was enough to break Sherlock's paralysis. He was breathing hard but managed to say “Ha-” before the panic overtook him and he ran from the alley.


	7. Chapter 7

The sky was just beginning to transition to the grey of dawn when Sherlock found himself in a dimly lit corridor inside a block of shabby flats in Enfield looking at the entrance to one of his bolt-holes. It had been an unconscious choice on his part but he saw the wisdom in coming here as it was his oldest hide away, still surviving from his days at Uni. He had only been back here once in the last decade, just after his return to London when he had checked to make sure it was undisturbed and to replace his emergency supplies. Now he removed a large ventilation grate in the wall and crawled though with less than his usual grace into a small forgotten utility room.

Mechanically he took a bottle of water and a bit of rubber sheeting out of a large metal box. He spread the sheet out over the thin single mattress that was the room's only other fixture and sat down with his back against the wall, sipping the water. 

It could have been several minutes or several hours later that it occurred to Sherlock that he might be in shock. The idea swirled away quickly in the maelstrom that was his mind palace currently. He tried to take another drink only to find the bottle empty.

A hand, long pale fingers familiar, offered him a full bottle which he took.

“Quite different than the last time I found you here, brother mine.” Mycroft said as dry and arch as ever.

Sherlock only vaguely remembered the last time Mycroft had been here, he did clearly remember regaining consciousness the next day in a hospital and the horrors of rehab that had followed. He took a drink of the water, noting that Mycroft had even removed the cap for him.

“I received a most interesting call this morning, very early this morning. Dr Watson told me that the two of you had, how did he phrase it?” and here his voice took on extra disdain, “'had a row.' While he was quite sure that you would not appreciate seeing him again right now he was concerned that this might be a bad night for you to be alone. Concerned enough in fact to freely give me the time and place he saw you last, leaving a back alley in Barking. Despite knowing what conclusions I could draw from that information.”

Sherlock blinked at that, finally focusing enough to actually look at the man seated next to him. Somehow Mycroft could even make sitting on a dirty mattress in a literal hole in the wall look prim and fussy. 

So he now knew John/Hamish's secret now. Or had he before? It was always hard to know with his brother.

He took a breath, readying to defend his friend from Mycroft's machinations, before he stopped himself. John was a cold blooded killer, had in fact killed at least six people. Well, seven if you counted the cabbie which Sherlock realized that he never had. Sure it had been a bit different, Hope had been a killer, posing an immediate if somewhat indirect threat to Sherlock, but even then it would have been just as effective to shoot him in the shoulder or leg to incapacitate him as it had been to shoot him through the heart. Oh God, directly through the heart just like five of the Back-alley Butcher victims had been shot. Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut and leaned his head back, thumping the wall behind him. How had he not seen it so much early?

He could intellectually see how excuses could be made for Hope's death, but the other victims had been, if not very nice people than at least largely innocent of crime. Yet if he were honest with himself he didn't really hold their deaths again John, 'Hamish,' his mind corrected, unless he made himself. He tried out the phrase 'They should not have been killed.' in his mind and found that he couldn't bring himself to feel one way or another about it. Maybe he really was a psychopath. He thumped his head back into the wall again.

Mycroft seemed to take that as a cue to began speaking again“I have always maintained that caring is not an advantage, as you know. But a true psychopath would never have acted against their own self interests enough to jump off a building to save the lives of his friends, or indeed to have later helped one of those friends plan their wedding solely to keep him happy. Nor could a psychopath grieve as deeply as Dr Watson did at your death any more than they would give up their very deepest secret just to make sure a friend would be alright today.

“No, both of you certainly display a lack of empathy, Dr Watson for people who remind him of his parents and you perhaps a bit more generally, but you have both formed a real emotional attachment with one another completely precluding antisocial personality disorder as a diagnosis.

“And while I do not approve of the good doctor's extracurricular activities, you have been better since he came into your life. That is an exchange I am willing to make.”

Startled, Sherlock met Mycroft's eyes. He was surprised to see only truth and concern there. His brother was genuinely encouraging him to continue his friendship, or maybe more than friendship, with a serial killer in the name of seeing him happy. It was a startling revelation, and Sherlock's thoughts realigned around it before scattering into chaos again.

Mycroft stood up, brushed off his suit, and retrieved his brolly from where it was leaning against the wall. Before leaving he offered a parting shot, “Do tell Dr Watson that, though I may be forgiving of his indiscretions currently, if he tries to involve you anymore directly in the execution of them there will be consequences. Good day, brother.”

Sherlock watched him leave hoping to see the smarmy git forced to crawl through the air vent. When he instead walked to the door that Sherlock had helped to board over almost two decades ago and opened it without any trouble, Sherlock had to swallow back an irritated sigh.

As the door closed behind his brother, Sherlock stretched out his legs and began to think actively for the first time since he entered that alley in Barking. The first thing he did was check his phone, somehow it seemed Mycroft had managed to recharge it while he had been holding vigil with him. Sherlock hated feeling grateful to his brother.

He had a missed called from Mycroft, probably how he had activated the tracking chip in the phone, and three text messages starting from an hour or so after he had left Hamish at the alley.

**I guess you are not coming back to talk this out tonight so I am heading home. I am really sorry to have caused you such a shock, but please let's talk it over before you decide or delete anything. Let me know and I'll arrange a time we can talk. -H**

And another a couple of minutes later:

**I know that John is planning to bring Olivia over this afternoon. I just want you to know that I won't interfere with your time together unless you ask me to. -H**

The last text had been received less than an hour ago:

**Hey Uncle Shock, want to meet me and the Bee at Regent's Park or are you on a case? -JW**

He considered it. He knew that it would be hard to face John with his new knowledge and not give something away but he also could never say no to seeing Olivia. Besides, it might be best to get it over with before the full implications settled in his mind. So he texted back:

Wrapping up a stake out. Give me two hours to shower and change and meet me at home? -SH

**Great, Bee says it is a date. -JW**

 

He had a rare bit of trouble finding a cab so was running late when he reached Baker Street. In his rush to shower and change he almost missed the book laying on the kitchen table. It was a relatively thin sheaf of sheet music folded open to a song simply titled 'Lovesong.' One line towards the middle of the first page had been highlighted in blue:

_You make me feel like I am whole again_

Next to the last word there was a little smiley face eerily similar to the one that had once adorned the wall above the couch. Sherlock rolled his eyes, it would seem Hamish shared John's horrid sense of humor at least. 

On top of the page was another penny, Sherlock picked it up to look at the etched side. Oxytocin this time of course, the chemical thought to cause pair bonding. The date on the coin was 1916 and suddenly a connection sparked. If one added a hundred years to the date on each coin then the first coin from 1910 would translate to 2010, the year he met John, and the second coin would be 2014, the year he returned from the dead. He wondered what had been special about this year to get a coin, but then it occurred to him that this year he had met Hamish. How sentimental of the man. 

Sherlock now felt a bit mad at himself for spending all that time learning about the important events of 1910 and 1914 when the actual reason for those years turned out to be so straight forward. He wondered what other pieces he could fit together with the benefit of hindsight and was halfway to the wall of murder, coin still in hand, when he remembered that John and Olivia were likely on their way over right now. He changed course tucking the coin into the drawer of his nightstand and heading into the bathroom to get ready.

John and Olivia arrived just as he was shrugging into his suit jacket. It was maybe a little formal for a trip to the park but as much as he hated to admit it Sherlock was nervous and the suit helped.

As soon as he reached the top of the stairs John put the little girl down, letting her run giggling to Sherlock and demand that she be picked up. He obliged her but kept his eyes on John. He looked absolutely normal, without a trace of apprehension or guilt or anything on his open face just a warm, content smile. Sherlock narrowed his eyes, deducing him with more care than he had used in years, and again found nothing out of the ordinary aside from looking tired. That was enough to give him an opening.

“Late night?” Sherlock asked.

John laughed a bit, “Yeah, guess it was kind of obvious even though Mary let me have a bit of a lie in. I met up with some of the lad last night at the pub.”

“But you don't appear hungover at all, not drinking with them then?”

“Oh-no, there was lots of drinking. I have just never seemed to suffer much from hangovers. In fact, I think the only one I have had since Uni was after my stag night.”

“I wonder why that was.” Sherlock said more to himself, working through the implications. If Hamish used getting John drunk to excuse blackouts, as it seemed he had last night, then had he done the same during John's stag night? He wasn't sure what he thought about that night having been spent with Hamish. Again, he felt a hand on his thigh, saw the look of happiness and amusement on John's, Hamish's?, face. Had it been love after all?

It was fortunate that John was focused on the little girl in Sherlock's arms rather than on Sherlock's face. John just smiled and replied “Well, I blame your 'scientific method' of drinking. I honestly don't remember much past the first beaker. Are you sure you had washed them properly?”

Sherlock shook himself out of his thoughts, and retorted, “I know how to sterilize equipment!”

“When you can be bothered to...” John muttered.

Sherlock's indignant response was cut off when Olivia decided she was tired of being left out of the conversation and tugged on his shirt, demanding “Shock! Parc!”

“Pardon, Bee.” he said, and started walking towards the door and the park beyond. “On y va.”

The afternoon passed surprisingly pleasantly, Sherlock settling into the easy camaraderie he had always had with John. It was as if the night before had never happened. That more than anything convinced Sherlock that John wasn't lying to him. He was horrible at lying, it was one of the reasons that he had been forced to let John think him dead all those years much to their mutual pain and regret.

It wasn't until after dinner that any awkwardness arose between the two men. Olivia was coloring industriously and John was dozing through The Great British Bake Off when a particularly loud commercial for Jammie Dodgers startled him awake. He stretched, gently rotating his bad shoulder and muted the telly. He turned toward the desk where Sherlock was on his laptop and asked, “So, are you planning another stakeout tonight? Because if you are going after the Back-alley, er, you-know-what,” Mary had put her foot down about words like butcher and homicide being used around the baby, saying she would not be explaining how her daughter knew the phrase 'blood bath' in two languages to child services, “I can drop Olivia off at home and grab my gun. I don't like you being out there after serial killers without me.”

Sherlock had been furtively reading what reputable literature he could find on disassociate personality disorder and it took him a second to both bring up his own website to cover the page he had been reading and refocus on John. Then he had to take another second to decide how to respond to John's offer. He ending up going with part of the truth, “No, no stakeout tonight. I rather think the Back-alley But-” John cut him off with a quick wave of his hands and a pointed look at Olivia, “-case is over.”

“Really? You caught the killer and haven't spent the afternoon regaling us with your brilliance? How uncharacteristically humble of you.”

Sherlock's face must have been making an alarmed expression he wasn't aware of because John's next question sounded more concerned than teasing, “Oh, did the police solve it themselves and I just never heard?”

A certainty was growing in Sherlock's mind and he berated himself for not having considered it beforehand. Sherlock asked. “Do you remember that night shortly after Christmas, the night I brought Chinese and we talked about the case?”

“Did we talk about the case that night? I know you were still worked up about it, but I don't think we talked about it much.”

“After we put Bee to bed?” Sherlock couldn't help pressing a bit more.

“No, I went to bed right after that.” John smiled half in exasperation, half in fondness, “You do know I am only going to recall the conversations you have with me while I am actually present, right?”

'My God,' thought Sherlock, 'So I was talking to Hamish that night as well.' It was so unbelievably perfect at least from Hamish's perspective, because Sherlock did talk to John when he wasn't strictly speaking really there and John was well used to references to such conversations. That meant that Hamish had almost carte blanche to talk to Sherlock at will and both him and John would write off any resultant confusion.

“Sherlock! Come on now, It is getting scary again.”

“What? Oh, sorry John. Well what you would know had you been paying attention that night...”

“You mean if I had been there at all.”

“... is that the Christmas kil- er, one is going to be the last we hear from the Back-alley guy. A fact which I confirmed when he did not add any victims last night.”

“How could you know that for sure? He has struck later in the month after all.”

“While that is true, it is clear that the killer was choosing his dates based on Pi.”

John hesitated a second before clarifying, “You mean the mathematical sort of Pi not the tasty sort, don't you?”

“Of course! How could you pick a day based on baked goods?”

Something flashed across John's expressive face, a hint of a sly, delighted smile and Sherlock was suddenly reminded that as respectful as Hamish was being he was still present and Sherlock had just issued him a challenge. It also crossed his mind that maybe that the reason John's face was so hard to read was because it had two different people trying to look out of it at times.

What John said was a mild, “You might be right there. Still, are you sure that the case is over?”

“Oh, yes. The killer was ready to move on.”

“Ready to move on but not necessarily ready to stop killing?”

Sherlock shrugged, “That is not something I can theorize on. All I know is that he has broken his ritual now and that means that any consistencies he might have displayed, the consistencies I could have used to catch him, are gone. If he does kill again it will most like be in a new way, one that I can't predict let alone hope to stop.”

“Hey,” John stood up from his chair, moving to crouch next to Sherlock's chair, “Even if he does kill again, it is not like it is going to be your fault.”

“Won't it? John,” and he put a slight emphasis on the pronoun, “I have always been able to look to you for guidance on what is or is not good, to keep me right. From the beginning this killer has been seeking attention, staging elaborate scenes and taunting the authorities. If I had focused more on his victims, if I had been less interested in him and his puzzles and games than maybe some of those people would still be alive.”

“We are talking about the Back-alley Butcher here not Moriarty, right?”

“Clearly.” Sherlock said with a world of scorn in his voice.

“Not so 'clearly' to me, Sherlock. Look, I know that during both the times you faced down Moriarty I said things I regret about your lack of empathy. Believe me, I had years for it to haunt me that my last words face to face with my best friend were calling him a machine and disavowing his friendship. And you were right in pointing out that caring about those people would not have helped you solve their cases. As a doctor, God, especially one who has been out on battlefields, I should have been more understanding about needing emotional distance to do your job properly. It is not a bad thing, being able to find enjoyment and satisfaction in your job, particularly when that job is by its very nature grim and depressing. 

“Besides, both Moriarty and the Back-alley Butcher were killers before they crossed your path and while interaction with you might have changed their actions, okay, so it certainly did change at least Moriarty's actions, you still can't know that it changed them for the worse, right? I mean, Moriarty was absolutely insane, without you to entertain him I can picture him releasing a biological weapon or something just for the novelty. Who can say how the Back-alley killer would have kept escalating his murders without the challenge you provided him. And you did stop him this time, didn't you?”

“Y-yes,” Sherlock agreed, but he could hear the hesitation in his voice. John tilted his head, taking a breath to continue to argue, but Sherlock held up a hand to forestall him. “Look, you have made a lot of good points and I heard them all, but what I need right now is just time to think. Alright?”

“Of course, love” John paused as the endearment slipped out of his mouth, then looked embarrassed. “God, sorry, I meant Sherlock.”

There was a strained moment while John looked awkward and Sherlock tried not to laugh at the little trick he was sure Hamish had just pulled on his friend. Still, it seemed clear that Hamish understood that he still needed space.

Finally John stood up from his crouch, saying, “Well, I guess I should probably get the little Bee home, Mary is probably wondering where we are as it is.”

Olivia looked up from her coloring as John moved towards her. She grinned brightly and announced, “Dada. Kill!”

John looked surprised as he asked the little girl, “What?”

Obligingly she repeated "Kill, Kill!”

John, glanced at Sherlock, then both men broke in to laughter. Olivia looked indignant at this response which only made the men laugh harder. It was a couple of minutes before a gasping John was able to say ruefully, “Mary is going to kill me for this.”

“Kill.” Olivia agreed.

Sherlock walked over to pick up the child and whisper in her ear “Tuer.”

“Don't encourage her! You know Mary's French is almost as good as yours, you wanker.”

Sherlock made a show of covering the girl's ears, making her giggle. “John! Don't you think she has learned enough new vocabulary tonight?”

John laughed again as he gathered up the crayons and coloring books. When they had been safely packed away in their box and returned to the shelf, he came to claim the still giggling baby. “Say goodnight to your awful Uncle Shock.”

“Kiss!” She demanded and Sherlock obligingly pecked her cheek.

“I will see you two again Friday?” Sherlock asked a little tentatively.

“Of course.” John smiled and waved Olivia's arm for her as he said “Bye, bye” and Olivia resolutely said “Kill.” again.

Sherlock stood in his empty flat, his mind still a whirlwind of thoughts but with a lighter heart. Later, as he was tidying the dinner plates in the kitchen he was not entirely surprised to see that the book of sheet music he had left out was turned to a new page, a new line of lyrics highlighted:

_However far away_  
_I will always love you_  
_However long I stay_  
_I will always love you_  
_Whatever words I say_  
_I will always love you_  
_I will always love you_


	8. Chapter Eight

Sherlock threw himself into wrapping up the details of the Butcher case. It was not necessary at all, the killer had admitted it to him freely enough and it was not as if he had to build a case to go before a magistrate’s court but still he made graphs and constructed timelines, even going so far as to unearth the file on John that had appeared shortly after he had moved into the flat. Bloody meddling Mycroft. At the time he had been sure that he had deduced all that he needed to know about the other man, clearly he had been wrong. There was always something after all, though a second personality was rather more to miss than the gender of a sibling.

For a while reviewing the case did help, giving him a problem to solve and a structure to realign his mind palace around. However, every point he resolved and stored neatly away seemed to turn up new questions he couldn't answer driving him to the point of distraction.

It was during a long Tube ride back from Sevenoaks that Sherlock broke. The case had started off as a promising kidnapping but had devolved into nothing more than a misunderstanding on the date of a conference and he was annoyed and on edge and the questions were just circling in his mind and there was John just sitting next to him, probably picking out a horrible title for his blog post about case like 'The Confused Conferencer' or 'The Unmissing Man,' while all the answers lurked in the back of his brain. Finally Sherlock just couldn't stop a question from escaping. 

As causally as he could he asked, “Have you ever read 'The Lady of Shalott' by Tennyson?”

When John, who was more accustomed to non sequiturs then any other ten people combined, gave him an odd look Sherlock knew he had failed to be causal. Still after a moment John replied, “ I don't believe I have, my education was really more focused on sciences than on classic poetry. Why do you ask?”

Sherlock abandoned the attempt with a dismissive, “It was part of a case I read about, no one was able to determine why the killer had chosen it.”

“Ah,” was John's only comment. They lapsed back into silence, the moment seemingly past.

It was almost two hours later when Sherlock was back at Baker Street that his phone buzzed with a text from John's number.

**It was never as much about the poems as you seem to think. I mean, I did my best to pick ones that fit but it was more about the states those poems came from. -H**

Sherlock typed back angrily before he had completely thought through the implication of opening a conversation with Hamish.

**I spent three months studying, memorizing, and analyzing those poems only for you to tell me now that the poems don't matter? Besides, I did realize that the states mattered or I would not have got your little poem at all. -SH**

The reply was quick in coming.

**Well, that is the point of a puzzle after all? To be hard and to make you work for the answer. Is it really my fault you failed to focus enough on the states? Because you are right of course, getting my poem from inside the other poems was a perfectly sound analysis but I was hoping you would go deeper. -H**

Before Sherlock could text back demanding five minutes to finish solving this new riddle he received another text.

**And wasn't asking John about the poem sort of cheating? -H**

**No, John is by his own admission my best friend and if he is really unaware of your existence then I don't see how talking about you to him is any different then talking about any other case. -SH**

**Okay, far point on John. Still, I have hidden from him for almost thirty years. In fact in thirty years you are the only person I have ever been myself with. I think you can understand how I feel putting myself out there for the first time. I am trusting you, and trust does not come easily to me, love. -H**

It was a simple statement, an obvious fact. But somehow it clarified the chaos in Sherlock's mind because it was so true. He had always known that he would do anything to protect John but it was also now clear that he would never do anything to hurt or expose Hamish, even to John. And suddenly nothing else mattered, not the years Hamish had kept himself secret or the murders he had committed or especially how others would label him crazy, Hamish was trusting him and Sherlock trusted him back. Sherlock knew what he wanted to do.

**If you are still offering it, I'll take that first step for the next puzzle. -SH**

When he did not receive a reply, Sherlock went resignedly to his violin case.

He was playing 'Just Like Heaven' when he heard steps on the stairs. It was funny how the footsteps managed to sound different, heavier somehow then John's. He wondered how he had failed to notice before now.

He turned to face the short blond man, so achingly familiar, and he could not help asking, “John?”

“No,” a look of disappointment flitted across the man's face before the features went stoney. “Hamish.”

“Good.” Sherlock said firmly. He put down his violin and strode across the sitting room.

Hamish dropped into a fighting stance ready for anything, except it seemed for Sherlock to gently place his hands on either side of his face and tilt it up for a kiss.

It was not the best kiss, Sherlock was too nervous and Hamish too surprised for that. But after a couple of seconds Hamish relaxed and began to kiss back. Then it was the greatest kiss in the world. When Hamish put his hands on Sherlock's waist, pulling their bodies flush and causing Sherlock to moan into his mouth both men would have agreed that it was the hottest kiss in the world. It was like a damn bursting, seven years of feelings would be repressed no more and time stopped and the earth stood still and a thousand other romantic cliches suddenly made perfect sense to Sherlock.

 

Afterward, as they lay in Sherlock's bed naked and tangled together, Hamish broke the post-coital silence, “You know this will never be easy, right?”

Sherlock shrugged as best he could without unwrapping his arms from the man next to him, “Obviously.”

“I mean it,” Hamish said seriously. “John is really happy with Mary, and with his life in the suburbs now that you are a part of it again. I know neither of us want to mess that up for him.”

“Don't you think Mary suspects? She is not an idiot after all.”

“About me? No. I mean who in their right mind would ever guess multiple personalities? About the murders, maybe. About my love for you being more then platonic, yes.”

Sherlock looked at him sharply, and Hamish just shrugged in his turn. “Oh, come on now, it is not like either of us was working very hard to hide it. Or do you know any other 'friends' who trade longing glances like we have from the start? Then, my God, your best man's speech Sherlock... It was lucky you solved a murder at the end of it to distract people.” His voice became softer, “You know, it was that speech that made me decide that I could tell you about myself. If you could be that open and honest in front of so many people then I had to be brave enough to let you know that I loved you too.”

“That is why you changed your motivation on the fourth victim! I couldn't figure out why then and not on the third when I was already back.”

“God, you are adorable when you have just figured out something.” Hamish pulled him into another heated kiss and several more minutes were lost to the annals of time.

It was Sherlock who broke away, asking “Do you think Mary is going to cause us a problem?”

Hamish, who had been enjoying the kissing and had in fact started working toward a more carnal goal, huffed in frustration. Sherlock just grinned smugly at him and pulled back a bit, stopping him from continuing the kiss. After a few attempts to bridge the gap Hamish finally gave up, “Fine. Have it your way, tease. What was the question again?”

“Mary. Is she going to be a problem over our new, er, thing here?”

“Oh, no I don't think so, not about our shagging at least. We talked about it once obliquely shortly after Olivia was born. Well, I say 'we' but really she mentioned to John just how much time he was spending away from her and with you. John in his usual somewhat oblivious way missed the insinuation, but I didn't. Later I took an opportunity to pointedly ask about all the time she was spending out of town visiting spas and friends. I think we both came to the understanding that if she doesn't push about the relationship between you and I, I won't ask about her resuming her old profession.”

“But at that time there wasn't anything but friendship between us!”

“Wasn't there? And besides, I was planning out an elaborate killing at the time, spending a lot of time alone scouting alleys and people, placing mysterious orders online and staying up late writing poetry. Can you blame her for jumping to conclusions?”

“Well yes, but I can see how that could mislead even a clever mind. I guess.”

“Mmm, I am getting quite good at fooling clever minds, aren't I?” Hamish said, pressing his lips into Sherlock's curls. “Maybe I should add that to my CV.”

“No, don't. Only Mycroft would be impressed by that and we hardly need more attention from him.”

“Figured out the murdering then, did he? I thought he might.”

“Don't worry he gave his blessing in his own superior sort of way.”

“Oh love, I never doubted he would. How can you be the only person on the planet who doesn't see just how far your brother would go to keep you happy?”

“But he doesn't make me happy, that is just you.”

“Sherlock Holmes, that is the sweetest, most romantic thing I have ever heard. I am now require by law to snog you senseless.” Hamish suited actions to words, rolling on top of the taller man and pinning his wrists above his head.

“Is that so, Mr Watson.” Sherlock paused as Hamish kissed and bit a line down his neck then asked distractedly, “Actually that is a good question, you when through the same education as John so do you prefer 'Doctor?'” 

“You can call me 'Sir.'” Hamish growled into his ear and Sherlock's whole body trembled. When Hamish continued it was with a smirk in his voice, “Always thought you had a thing for military men.”

“Well, be that as it may, I am afraid you are going to be disappointed, _Sir_. I am never senseless.”

“And you have never begged, but I bet I can accomplish both.”

And he did both, twice. Hamish managed to look smug throughout the shower they were required to take in the aftermath. 

The feeling was unfortunately fleeting for him. As soon as they were again cuddled together in the bed Hamish cleared throat, then awkwardly began, “It is a bit late for it and all, but I suppose we still should probably er, discuss some things about us and where we-”

Sherlock cut him off there with an eye roll and an annoyed sigh, “Really, we are going to have the relationship talk now? Must we?”

“Yeah, we must! Sherlock, I love you madly and all, but I am also a fucking mental case who is married to a world class assassin and who is myself a killer. Honestly, I wouldn't advise my worst enemy to start anything with me. Are you sure that you want this? Want me?”

“Yes, yes of course I do! I cannot believe you are making me say this, but I have,” he visible braced himself before saying the word, “loved John for almost as long as I have known him. And since you started courting me with your puzzles and winning me with your terrible poems I have been torn. But you, you are perfect. You are interest and intrigue, loyalty and affection, all wrapped up in an appealing John-shaped package. It is like all my Christmases have come at once and now that I have adjusted to the idea I don't know how I could have ever wanted anything else. I don't care if society thinks you are crazy, you are just what I need.”

“Even though I am a killer? Because, I'll be honest, I am not sure I can stop that entirely. The staging and the games were fun, but really that has always only been just a way for me to draw out the time between victims. I need that adrenaline, that rush, and the emotional fulfillment of continuing to punish my parents.”

“I know,” Sherlock said quietly, “And I don't expect you to stop. Hamish, I know now that I have said this to you before, my hands aren't exactly clean either. It wasn't just Magnussen either, all those years I was away, the years we don't talk about... I can live with your bad habits if you can live with mine.” He tried out a smile, “Though Mycroft has been very firm about me helping you out with yours.”

“But if I am caught, I don't want to drag your name back though the mud. It would be bad enough for Olivia to have to go through that, I can't see you be vilified again.”

“Really? Not only did you manage to string me along for more then a year without me catching you, you now have a genius, an assassin, and the British government on your side. You are never going to be caught.”

“But,” Hamish started again, this time Sherlock cut him off. “No, no more objections, no more trying to end this before it really starts. You were right at the beginning it is a bit late for that. Has been to late too stop this since I saw you in that alley in Barking.”

“It is going to be hard.”

“I relish a challenge.”

“We won't have much time together.”

“That is alright, you can be a bit tedious in large doses.”

Hamish almost laughed at that, “No I can't, you berk. You are thinking of yourself there.”

Sherlock again rolled his eyes, looking as haughty as it is possible to do in worn pajamas and while curled tightly around another human being. “This is happening, and we will work out the problems as they come up. Now go to sleep. John has work tomorrow and he is already going to be inexplicably sore in hard to explain ways, we shouldn't make him tired too.”

“Oh God, you are right. Poor John. Don't suppose you could mention at some point tomorrow how he went on a long chase tonight. He will write off the blackout as caused by the exertion, hopefully the sore muscles too.”

“I'll endeavor to work it in.”

“And, well,” here Hamish looked a bit awkward and regretful. “I should probably sleep upstairs. It is never certain that I'll wake up in control and I rather think that even a brief flash of being in bed with you is going to be hard to explain away.”

“Ah, of course.” But Sherlock couldn't keep the disappointment entirely out of his voice.

“I am really sorry, love. I am. But as I just pointed out, this is going to be hard work. We will likely never be able to wake up together and it might be days until I can find a way to see you again... God, are you sure this is what you want? You deserve so much better than this, you deserve someone who can be by your side always.”

“Doesn't matter what you think I deserve, even though you are clearly wrong, because what I want is you. Besides, John is always at my side and that just means that you are too.”

“Okay, you have a point there.” Still Hamish sighed as he push out of the bed. “I guess you'll see me or John in the morning. Or,” here he glanced at the clock, “later in the morning maybe. I might just beat even you out of bed today.”

“Maybe you'll see me, but only if you kiss me goodnight well enough to make it worth my while to bother with you.”

Hamish shook his head with mock solemnity, “The sacrifices I make. Goodnight my love.” and he leaned in for a kiss that was certainly enough to justify several very early mornings indeed.

 

The light slanting in around the heavy drapes was enough to let Sherlock know that it was late in the morning, far later then he had set his alarm for. He flailed about on his nightstand for his phone to check the time and found a yellow sticky note stuck to the screen:

_You are just too beautiful asleep to wake up, so I turned off your alarm. I'll text you today._   
_Love, H_

Sherlock was both a bit annoyed to be denying the chance to see either Hamish or John off and a bit touched by being called beautiful. He woke the screen on the phone to check the time and see if he had any messages from John's number. He had only one message and it was from Mycroft. He dutifully ignored it and padded out to use the loo.

It was when he began to make himself a cup of tea that he found the plastic doll in the sink. It floated in about a half inch of water, swathed in a white dress. The doll's arms had been bent into an unnatural looking 90 degree angle and flowers and mathematical equations floated all around it in the water. 

Sherlock grinned widely. The game was on.

 

Epilogue

 

**Back-alley Butcher**

_From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia_

The Back-alley Butcher was a serial killer active in London, UK between 2012 and 2026. During that time six men and seven women were targeted by the killer, all shot close range. Most of the victims were left staged in back alleyway, giving the killer their name. Although the killer did leave a series of cryptograms at the murder scenes no conclusive evidence has ever surfaced to lead law enforcement to a suspect and the case was marked as inactive by New Scotland Yard in May 2032. The killer's identity remains unknown.

_This page was last modified on 2 June 2054, at 03:51._


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